J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye

Currently Listening to: Guilty Simpson, Mans World

J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
James Dean, Bruce Lee, Jimmi Hendrix, DefJam, Casablanca all sum up to one word American Classics. Another great American Classic is Catcher in the Rye. Read this book people if you haven't. If you want to read it don't read any further. But If you don't want to read it here is a one of my favorite quotes, or more like a favorite conversation from the story.

" I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But, I honestly don't know what kind... This fall I think you are riding for-- it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives,were looking for something their own environment couldn't provide them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened by human behavior. You are by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now...

Nine out of ten times they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.

Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it for any considerable distance it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have, what it'll fit and, maybe what it won't . After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.

J.D. Salinger

Meker Photoshoot

Currently Listening to:Jern Eye, Killin It'
Been rather busy as of late. I'll blog more in depth later, but as for now, check out the video I put together for Meker Clothing ft. sounds from JernEye. I've been rather curious about the development of brands and the various strength of awareness by different audiences.

In My Own Process: I

BRUCE LEE:

I don't know what I will be writing but just simply writing whatever wants to be written. If the writing communicates and stirs something within someone, it's beautiful. If not, well, it can't be helped.

To Begin with, the article is not an easy one because it is most difficult to write about oneself, because each of us is such a complexity. It is similar to an eye that can see externally but not internally. Granted, it would be a much easier job if one happens to be the type who can indulge oneself in a manipulative game of an imaginative self. But this bothers me.

I have come to the realization that sooner or later what it really amounts to is the bare fact that even an attempt to really write something about oneself demands, first of all, an honesty toward oneself, to be able to take responsibility to be what we actually are; that is a pure human being.

Well, ever since I was a kid I have possessed within myself this instinctive urge for growth and daily expansion of my potential. It has been quite some time now since I acquired and really understood the DISTINCTION between SELF-ACTUALIZATION and this ILLUSION of SELF-IMAGE ACTUALIZATION. Through my own observations, I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.

The truth is that life is an ever-going process, ever-renewing, and it is just meant to be "lived," but not "lived for." It is something that cannot be squeezed into a self- constructed security patterm a game of rigid control and clever manipulation. Instead, to be what I term a "quality" human being one has to be transparently real and have the courage to be what he/she is.

Yet most people are doing just the opposite; they engage in a protective daily routine of security (a kind of thumb-sucking) by seeing themselves into some sort of various self-contructed, secured routine pattern in a rigid game... In this world there are a lot of people who cannot thouch the heart of the matter but talk merely intellectually (not emotionally) about how they would do this and that. [They] talk about it, but yet nothing is either actualized or accomplished. Of Course, we have many others, and we can go into a few. Another type represents the "you should" be this, you SHOULD change that. A case of what should (a crystallized something) versus what is.

-- Bruce Lee

The legacy that Bruce Lee left behind has grown into political diplomacy. This recent statue (November 2005) was placed in Bosnia to promote equality, tolerance, and peace between the Croatians and Serbians, two different ethnic groups who have been fighting since the mid-nineties. They came together to peacefully celebrate this creation of this statue.