The Hammock Papers: Understanding.

10 February 2012

Understanding.

Anthony Hopkins, as John Quincy Adams, addressing the Supreme Court during the trial scene in the movie Amistad ...

When a member of the Mende encounter a situation when there appears to be no hope at all, he invokes his ancestors. Tradition. the Mende believe that if one can summon the spirit of one's ancestors, then they have never left ... the wisdom and strength they fathered and inspired will come to his aid.

James Madison.

Alexander Hamilton.

Benjamin Franklin.

Thomas Jefferson.

George Washington.

John Adams.

We have long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared, in doing so, we might acknowledge that our individuality we so, so revere, is not entirely our own. Perhaps we feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But we have come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we've been made to understand and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.

We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the power to do what is right ...

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MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL