Tom Robbins
One of my favorite authors, Tom Robbins, brings a tear to my eyes when he waxes so poignantly. I just reread Villa Incognito and was wowed by how much his writing resonates with me. Anyway, here are some excerpts:
when comparing men with trees -
"Trees do generate oxygen; men just stink it up, and generally misuse it. Trees hold the soil in place, men are constantly displacing it. Trees provide shelter and protection to countless species, men threaten the existence of those species. When in sufficient number, trees regulate atmospheric temperatures, men endanger the planet by knocking those regulations askew. You can't rest in the shade of a human, not even a roly-poly one; and isn't it refreshing that trees can undergo periodic change without having a nervous breakdown over it? And which has more dignity - the calmer spiritual presence - a tree or a typical Homo sapiens? Best of all, perhaps, what maple or cypress ever tried to see you something you didn't want?"
on the soul -
"...the soul is most definitely not some pale vapor wafting off a bucket of metaphysical dry ice. For all of its ectoplasmic associations, it steadfastly contradicts those who imagine it to be a billow of sacred flatulence or a shimmer of personal swamp gas."
"Think of it [soul] as a kind of train. Yes, a long, lonesome freight train rumbling from generation to generation on an eternally rainy morning: its boxcars are loaded with sighs and laughter, its hobos are angels, its enineer is the queen of spades - and the queen of spades is wild. Whooo-hooo! Hear that epiphanic whistle blow...The train's destination is the godhead, but it stops at the Big Bang, at the orgasm, and at that hole in the fence that the red fox sneaks through down behind the barn. It's simultaneously a local and an express, but it doesn't transport weaponry, and it certainly ain't no milk run."
and my favorite
"...the soul is nothing more, probably, than the authentic vibration of the biosphere, registered and amplified within the human sensorium. Think of it as that somewhat lumpy cloud of indefinable energy that is generated when human emotion and human intelligence interface with the larger body of nature."
more later...
when comparing men with trees -
"Trees do generate oxygen; men just stink it up, and generally misuse it. Trees hold the soil in place, men are constantly displacing it. Trees provide shelter and protection to countless species, men threaten the existence of those species. When in sufficient number, trees regulate atmospheric temperatures, men endanger the planet by knocking those regulations askew. You can't rest in the shade of a human, not even a roly-poly one; and isn't it refreshing that trees can undergo periodic change without having a nervous breakdown over it? And which has more dignity - the calmer spiritual presence - a tree or a typical Homo sapiens? Best of all, perhaps, what maple or cypress ever tried to see you something you didn't want?"
on the soul -
"...the soul is most definitely not some pale vapor wafting off a bucket of metaphysical dry ice. For all of its ectoplasmic associations, it steadfastly contradicts those who imagine it to be a billow of sacred flatulence or a shimmer of personal swamp gas."
"Think of it [soul] as a kind of train. Yes, a long, lonesome freight train rumbling from generation to generation on an eternally rainy morning: its boxcars are loaded with sighs and laughter, its hobos are angels, its enineer is the queen of spades - and the queen of spades is wild. Whooo-hooo! Hear that epiphanic whistle blow...The train's destination is the godhead, but it stops at the Big Bang, at the orgasm, and at that hole in the fence that the red fox sneaks through down behind the barn. It's simultaneously a local and an express, but it doesn't transport weaponry, and it certainly ain't no milk run."
and my favorite
"...the soul is nothing more, probably, than the authentic vibration of the biosphere, registered and amplified within the human sensorium. Think of it as that somewhat lumpy cloud of indefinable energy that is generated when human emotion and human intelligence interface with the larger body of nature."
more later...