The Constant Situation of Extraordinary Circumstances!

“The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security... In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.”

Spinoza

And something on borders:

“When I open my wallet

To show my papers

Pay money

Or check the time of a train

I look at your face.

The flower’s pollen

Is older than the mountains

Aravis is young

As mountains go.

The flower’s ovules

Will be seeding still

When Aravis then aged

Is no more than a hill.

The flower in the heart’s

Wallet, the force

Of what lives us

Outliving the mountain.

And our faces, my heart, brief as photos.

Once Upon A Time

The first was a hare. At two thousand meters on a mountain frontier. Where are you going? Asked the French customs officer. To Italy, I said. Why didn’t you stop? He asked. I thought you beckoned me on, I replied. And at that moment everything was forgotten because a hare ran across the road, ten yards away from us. It was a lean hare, with tufts on the tips of its ears of brown smoke. And although it was running slowly, it ran for its life. Sometimes that can happen.

From “and our faces, my heart, as brief as photos”

John Berger

And on transformation, new beginnings:

The word psyche means two things in Greek, his aunt said. Two very different but interesting things. Butterfly and soul. But when you stop and think about it carefully, butterfly and soul aren’t so different, after all, are they? A butterfly starts out as a caterpillar, an ugly sort of earthbound, wormy nothing, and then one day the caterpillar builds a cocoon, and after a certain amount of time the cocoon opens and out comes the butterfly, the most beautiful creature in the world. That’s what happens to souls as well, Archie. They struggle in the depths of darkness and ignorance, they suffer through trials and misfortunes, and bit by bit they become purified by those sufferings, strengthened by the hard things that happen to them, and one day, if the soul in question is a worthy soul, it will break out of its cocoon and soar through the air like a magnificent butterfly.

Paul Auster, Book 4321