Quote Of The Week

"It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future, and insists on predicting millions of moments... and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand."

Oh! Good Old-Fashioned War!

‎"...as he turned away to walk, his ma was still in shock, at seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand. But as he turned to go, he called his mother close, and he dropped his medals down into her hand."

Shine On

"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

From Self-Reliance, 1841

Quote Of The Week

"Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about will come true. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside."

Farewell King Neptune

Abraham "Abraham" Novitsky

Rest In Peace

"With his thick white beard and pointy mustache, muscled biceps and faded white tank top, Abraham Novitsky, better known as Rabbi Abraham Abraham, did not have a traditional congregation." ... Story continues here: Farewell To The Rabbi Of The Beach (City Room)

Dig: Rabbi Abraham Abraham's Synagogue Was The Beach

Photo by Norman Blake

A Gallery Of Cool, Take Five

Desmond Dekker

Michael Caine

Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan at The Factory

The Vagrants

Charlotte Rampling

[ Previous Galleries Of Cool: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 ]

Responsabilité

"I am responsible for everything ... except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world ... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant."

From Being And Nothingness, 1943

Quote Of The Week

"Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes."

"You never ask me what's on the flipside!"

Quote Of The Week

"Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther." [from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]

A Coney Island Of My Mind #7

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2011

Looking Through Butterfly Wings

Ira Cohen

Rest In Peace

"Ira Cohen made phantasmagorical films that became cult classics. He developed a way of taking photographs in mesmerizing, twisting colors, including a famous one of Jimi Hendrix. He published works by authors like William Burroughs and the poet Gregory Corso. He wrote thousands of poems himself. He wrote The Hashish Cookbook under the name Panama Rose." ... Story continues here: Ira Cohen, An Artist And A Touchstone, Dies At 76 (NY Times)

Quote Of The Week

"All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."