The Hammock Papers: Strength.

04 August 2017

Strength.

A foul night came on -- the dark of the moon -- and Zeus rained from dusk to dawn and on sodden West Wind raged. Odysseus spoke up now, keen to test the swineherd. Would he take his cloak off, hand it to his guest or at least tell one of his men to do the same? He acre for the stranger so, who ventured now, "Listen Eumaeus, and all you comrades here, allow me to sing my praises for a moment. Say it's the wine that leads me on, the wold wine that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs, laugh like a fool, -- it drives the man to dancing ... it even tempts him to blurt out stories better never told. But now I'm sounding off I can't hold back. Oh make me young again, and the strength inside me steady as a rock. Just as I was that day we sprang a sudden ambush against the Trojans.

Homer, from The Odyssey

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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