COME RAIN OR COME SHINE ~

I've never played The Eagles. Never. Not allowed in the house.

But this song is.

HENRY MILLER ~

—————————————————

It is not enough to overthrow governments,

masters, tyrants: one must overthrow his own

preconceived ideas of right and wrong, good

and bad, just and unjust. We must abandon the

hard-fought trenches we have dug ourselves

into and come out into the open, surrender our

arms, our possessions, our rights as individuals,

classes, nations, peoples. A billion men seeking

peace cannot be enslaved. We have enslaved

ourselves, by our own petty, circumscribed

view of life. It is glorious to offer one's life for

a cause, but dead men accomplish nothing. 

Life demands that we offer something more —

spirit, soul, intelligence, goodwill. Nature is

ever ready to repair the gaps caused by death,

but nature cannot supply the intelligence, the

will, the imagination to conquer the forces of

death. Nature restores and repairs, that is all. It

is man's task to eradicate the homicidal instinct

which is infinite in its ramifications and mani-

festations. It is useless to call upon God, as it is

futile to meet force with force.

H E N R Y      M I L L E R

Anyone lifting their head up to recognize the power and the glory

of Henry Miller, in my book, is a good day for the reader,

the individual, the world. Although a bit of a boggy

appreciation, Burnside does dig down into the golden

essence of Miller — not simply the once popular

lust of his Tropic books — but the realer lust

for life, which hasn't been equaled in his

many books of essays, travel, philosophy

and like Whitman, the greater love

of poetry and liberation.

Princeton 

2018

photo: Henry Miller

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