"The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger... easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help. We are alone in this quest.... I have met a great many pilgrims on their way towards God and I wonder why they have chosen to look for him rather than themselves. Perhaps I am missing the point -- perhaps whilst looking for someone else you might come across yourself unexpectedly, in a garden somewhere or on a mountain watching the rain. But they don't seem to care about who they are. Some of them have told me that the very point of searching for God is to forget about oneself, to lose oneself for ever. But it is not difficult to lose oneself, or is it the ego they are talking about, the hollow, screaming cadaver that has no spirit within it? I think that cadaver is only the ideal self run mad, and if the other life, the secret life, could be found and brought home then a person might live in peace and have no need for God. After all, He has no need for us, being complete." ~ Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry "I see you, and am healed as with a balm, I seize you, and my striving soul grows calm; And borne upon my spirit's ebbing tide, Little by little drifting out to sea, I tread on its bright mirror -- far and wide As new dawn breaks, new shores are beckoning me! A fiery chariot on light wings descends And hovers by me! I will set forth here On a new journey to the heaven's ends, To pure activity in a new sphere! O sublime life, o godlike joy! And how Do I, the ertswhile worm, deserve it now?" ~ J.W. Goethe, Faust Part I "Tequila, scorpion honey, harof the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!" ~ Tom Robbins, "Still Life EWith Woodpecker" "Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire.
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