(large wooden key on wall outside bedroom door)
(selected aphorisms by Richard Davies, 1990 A.D.)
……………………………………………………………………
“We do it to ourselves and then we do it to each other.”
“He wanted to give himself up to her and she to him. That was their best.”
“Whenever love got analyzed, it died.”
“Affirmation is salvation. Molly Bloom’s ‘yes’ is the door to life’s light.”
“Fear twists lovers into grotesque shapes.”
“Whatever made money went.”
“To affirm others is to affirm oneself.”
“Nature provides the answers that materialism lacks.”
“Death by reason.”
“Technology is escapism. We are prisoners of technology.”
“Behavior and experience are separate.”
“Our main fears are of death, life, love, ourselves, and each other.”
“Sanity = adapting to a crazy world and estrangement from ourselves. We usually sacrifice the inner for the outer.”
“We have abdicated ecstasy, preferring convention to intensity. Normalcy is typically repression.”
“Live simply, happily.”
“You cannot help others who defile their better selves.”
“Love dwarfs everything. Its perspectives level materialism, other petty things.”
“We will always find a way to blow up ourselves.”
“Life is a continuous search for validation.”
“We can be blind or see life steadily and whole.”
“Understanding mysteries is a privilege of genius.”
“To hope is to dream.”
“Love always reveals your fragility, your ongoing inner need to connect.”
“There is great strength in the words ‘I can do it myself. I don’t need anyone else.'”
“What truly scares people is individual strength: especially a fearless show(ing) of will, independence, passion, and imagination.”
“If you want to do something, don’t just discuss it.”
“The desire for unconditional love is a symptom of seriously-arrested development.”
“Some people’s lives consist of one accident after another.”
“Goodness without guts is no damn good at all.”
“Many people want to behave badly and be loved for it.”
“Tactile is a hands-on approach.”
“No one wants to look like a fool, particularly a woman.”
“Some will endure humiliation for approval sake.”
“Most interesting relationships have an element of ambiguity to them.”
“Love and autonomy are not incompatible terms.”
“Self-confidence is a turn-on in love.”
“Many people repudiate their better selves and own essential identities.”
“Writing is a meaningful questioning of self and others.”
“Lovers evolve their own dream.”
“Good writing writes itself like dictation.”
“Daily roles are often superficial and unfulfilling.”
“Feelings are seldom expressed directly and without qualification.”
“Most people are afraid of nothing, of what they might become.”
“There are people who would kill themselves and others to preserve their own shadows and false selves, or in order to win an imagined social acceptance.”
“Most of us give unconvincing or dishonest performances.”
“Authentic possibilities sing every minute everywhere around us.”
“You can do all kinds of stuff, go through the movements, and be completely dead inside. Large missing pieces and frequent alienation from self and others are two recurring life motifs.”
“We’d rather buy into groups than get ourselves centered on our own.”
“Fear and addiction cause individuals to submit to groups. Groups ultimately inhibit individual freedom.”
“It may be necessary to defect or go into exile in order to find one’s self.”
“The worst thing an individual can do is to doubt him/herself. The moment that the individual worries his/her experience not being in accord with others is the supreme moment of true lostness.”
“Life and love, the highest arts.”
“Talk turns love into meta-relationship. The best of love is silent, reverent, and tactile, ultimately an abandonment of self.”
“Ego is the major obstacle. Humility helps.”
“To be honest is to be ready to die.”
“Most people are utterly distracted and can’t see the whole for the parts.”
“One can be seriously deficient in inner life below all those nice-looking surfaces.”
“Imagination is the greatest faculty and adventure.”
“Hell is collective hysteria. To be fatally addicted to the validation of others is to be nothing more than a shell or ghost.”
“To be ‘normal’ today is to be stupid, repressed, estranged, and malleable.”
“Prevail and know integrity.”
“True sanity = leaving the formation or group.”
“Learning is the ultimate metaphor and it is never too late to learn.”
“Art is the miracle of creating beauty out of nothing.”
‘Love raises suffering and humility to a higher plane of regard.”
“People spend a lot of time asleep or paralyzed.”
“Most conversations are self-centered, elliptical monologues.”
“When in doubt, walk away.”
“People rarely talk about the exact same thing.”
“Happiness is to be lost in any given moment.”
“Humankind is at its most lovable stage when it gives of itself and asks for nothing in return.”
“Work and moments of being are mutually incompatible.”
“There is no cure for unrequited love but the experience of absence.”
“Others are only too willing to deny your experience and tell you how to feel and act instead.”
“A fool’s paradise beats the coffins of convention.”
“We are deeply afraid to really live and love.”
“Listen to your heart first. Morality will never love you.”
“Analytical minds just break the spell.”
“Being nice to others is just being nice to yourself.”
“There is no desire or fear in a state of grace.”
“We can rationalize ourselves out of existence if we ‘brain it’ too much.”
“No one person can completely fulfill the needs, wished, desires, and missing pieces of someone else.”
“Each of us has to find his or her own metaphor, script, poem, or story.”
“There are no certainties anymore except mistakes, miscommunication, and constant change.”
“Poems speak of great symptoms. Their expression is a condition, their form a necessity.”
“Poems are written for other poems listening.”
“Keep a clear heart when forests burn down. Hang on to stars when all maps are gone.”
“Though the garden’s asleep, its forever keys are there for the finding.”
“We play blind for most the game.”
“We fly to one another and pray for contact.”
“The metaphor is us and we are the stars.”
“Separation is always important when you’re working with diffusion.”
“There is a truth to every absence beyond despair.”
“Most people have preferred self-images which they don’t want threatened by honesty.”
“Many people aren’t smart or brave enough to break free of the protection racket of ‘We’/’Other(s)’.”
“True individuals are admired first, then copied, and often finally resented.”
“Conflict is constant with only the odd pleasurable oasis.”
“Know thyself first, then the world.”
“If something works, don’t breathe or move a muscle.”
“External conflicts are merely inner conflicts turned outward/inside out.”
“Confusion arises when an individual has no clear self-knowledge or positive personal value system.”
“The real purpose of education is to increase awareness and reduce conflict. It widens and broadens one’s possibilities, understanding, and appreciation.”
“There are a lot of folks out there walking on eggs with much internal bleeding.”
“Most people are condemned to be misunderstood by others. Ultimately, one must be prepared to be misunderstood by others…often.”
“Nothing can be assumed or taken for granted, least of all, communication.”
“Good education occurs when teachers stand back and give students room to breathe. It is telling people that the teacher trusts and believes in them and thinks they’re ‘okay’.”
“Education is helping people to realize their better selves.”
“Most people take things personally and accentuate the worst about others.”
“The well-adjusted individual accepts having his or her best intentions misunderstood by others.”
“We are all of us buried, waiting for the others to confess first.”
“The best one can do is to call the shots in one’s own life.”
“Attitude is everything and anything is possible once you accept this fact.”
“The best is when you stop or cheat Time.”
“Most people act as if they’re going to live forever.”
“One moment, one act can justify a life.”
“Dogs don’t mask. Unlike people, they don’t cover up when they screw up.”
“Our only hope is that the guardians will triumph over the players.”
“It is important to stay with your own game and intuition and not to get distracted from these.”
“Without purpose is burnout, complete exhaustion.”
“Fear of intimacy is the last barrier to happiness.”
“You can’t really count on others who have, at best, their own lives to lead.”
“Everything comes down to control. People need to get control of their lives.”
“In solitude is strength.”
“There is a fascinating lemming-like quality to many people’s lives.”
Organization is a wilful structured interpretation and understanding of experience.”
“It is wrong to possess another.”
“A moment’s betrayal lasts forever.”
“Something there is which doesn’t love a crowd.”
“When in doubt, go your own way.”
“Better love late than never.”
“Who in love needs food or drink?”
“Music: the heard balance. Painting: the seen poem.”
“Say little, but say the right thing.”
“There is nothing worse than an ungrateful child or lover.”
“Imagination = Salvation.”
“The great truths can’t be found online or on t.v.”
“Salvation cannot be bought at the mall or on eBay.”
“You have to lose control and self in order to find love.”
“Quests create self.”
“When in doubt, keep it open.”
“A touch can be a thousand words, a poem.”
“Motivation and bad weather seldom go together.”
“Being famous today means having the freedom to find interesting ways to ‘off yourself’.”
