Old Souls

Dr Ego Prozac

Stopped to Ponder

What defines us is how well we rise after we fall.

Photo by: Sacha 1969

From The Study-a conversation of possibilities

"My friend, nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.
Take responsibility for your actions, but do not blame or judge yourself."

Don Miguel Ruiz

Stopped to Ponder

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.
Bertrand Russell

Thank you +Öteki Yüzüm

Clear conscience

N D Shadow

If you have a clear conscience, it's usually a sign of a bad memory.

The Shadow
Resembles Moe Dark

From The Road- Beggar Man

From the Road. He has been a familiar site for days at the corner of his Hollywood and Vine. Always playing his six string and humming a tune. They just call him The Beggar Man. Some days I would leave him alms and others I would share my lunch. Never sensed he was a disturbed or troubled man...just a man without wealth nor health. He always had a smile for all as that passed, even those that seemed to be living a life of strife. On this day I offered nothing but asked Beggar Man if I  could I sit with him a spell?

He nodded and smiled as I sat next to him on the sidewalk. Tried to hum his tune but from his look I could tell he was a one man band...I listened...he played...I saw many stories in his head, as he played and I listened. If you really listen... he was playing and humming The Philosophers Stone.  "It's a hard road, even my friends don't know, And I am searching...searching for the philosophers stone."

His blue eyes gleaming under the brim of his hat...
We just looked at one another as we sat...
How hard is your road my friend...
Where do I start, where do we end...

"You like Van Morrison?" I asked. He replied, "I like the song."

And so it was on that day we both belonged...
That two souls received for more than just a song...
In a brief moment we shared what we thought had gone...
And little kindness to each was shown...

I have returned to that space on the sidewalk now for over two months, and I wonder if my friend may have found his Philosophers Stone. I leave you this my dear friend...

Out on the highways and the by-ways all alone
I'm still searching for, searching for my home
Up in the morning, up in the morning out on the road
And my head is aching and my hands are cold
And I'm looking for the silver lining
Searching for the philosophers stone
Up in the morning, up in the morning
When the streets are white with snow
It's a hard road, it's a hard road daddy-o
Up in the morning, up in the morning
Out on the job, well, you've got me searching for
Searching for, the philosophers stone
Even my best friends they don't know
That my job is turning lead into gold
When you hear that engine drone
I'm on the road again and I'm searching for
The philosophers stone
It's a hard road, even my best friends they don't know, I'm searching, searching for the philosophers stone-Van Morrison


Be well Beggar Man...you gave kindness, for nothing in return.
His name is...Rufus

"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket,

Dr Ego Prozac “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Sane Asylum Classic Series

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall 

calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. 

On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man 

who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully

 away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. 

He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all 
the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he 

is growing old? 

Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over 
his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities 

that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, 
not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. 
sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are 
things which cannot inspire envy.' "

From "Logotherapy in a Nutshell", an essay” 
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

The Sane Asylum Quote Series

Dr Ego Prozac

Made Me Grin Series

Made Me Grin

The Sane Asylum Learning Series

“It is a happy faculty of the mind to slough that which conscience refuses to assimilate.” ― William Faulkner, Light in August

Front Porch Psychology Series

"When you are tired you will be attacked by thoughts you conquered long ago."

Ego

Sane Asylum Quotes

Dr Ego Prozac

Our Children

I Come From

I come from bloody noses and scraped knees.
Bright blue eyes holding onto the promise of tomorrow 
that will never come.
I come from optimism,
forever filled with the hope of
something better.
I come from sugar coated lies 
Spoken from caved lips of hidden truth.
I come from pangs of anxiety, balled fists and damp eyes.
I come from the heartbeat in my ear drums that cannot be escaped.
I close my eyes, but fire burns brighter in the darkness.

I come from misconception.
I begin to understand the world for what it is.
I come from a new beginning; hopeful of a better start to something new, but forever fearful.
I come from power, of a stronger person that has been painfully carved along the way.
It is all a matter of perspective.

A funny thing happened on the way to therapy

"Feel the feeling, but don't let it become the emotion.
Allow it, feel it and release it."

Stopped to Ponder

The Sane Asylum Quote Series

The Sane Asylum Nature Series

From The Road...Mr Bill

From The Road-The East side of the sign has been wind rubbed to a white on red pastel blur. The West side facing the lake, still proclaims to the world "Bill's Bar-B-Q."

Mr Bill turns 96 today and it's his 75th wedding anniversary. From his frame and screen barbecue shack(he calls it the pit), Mr Bill looks out on a blue, fall sky wrapped around a hardwood forest. Just across the highway still marks the house where he was born.

"That's the family place," Mr Bill says. "The house over there that's blown down." There is no other way to say it, the house has blown down, what must have been a fine, rambling, wood frame house fallen in on itself like a smashed orange crate.

"I shared that house with my wife for 60 years," he said as he tended his hickory log fire and greeted a couple parked a few feet from the shack's screen door.

A man and woman from New Orleans, just passing by and was told of Mr Bill's fare and had to give it a try. The woman heard us talking about his anniversary and she wanted to know how  his wife could have stayed married to him for so long. He looked at her with a grin and quipped, "She must have been crazy."

Mr Bill placed a stack of ribs in front of the women and I heard him telling her male companion, "Beauty before age." I think the gentleman got offended. Mr Bill looked at me, smiled and said, "I was born ugly, I enjoy it."

Between customers, he swats flies and plays solitaire on a lap board. His cards looked as though they had been dropped by the Spaniards. "Naw, they are two months old." He said.

Said he met Ms. Lender at church, not a place regularly attended even then, but regular enough to meet his bride. Together they raised seven children, nineteen grandchildren and to many great to count. Gave all his grandkids a hundred dollar bill when they finished high school.

Folks from these parts know Mr Bill as one of the areas oldest and most revered story tellers. He denied that of course, but only long enough to zap the Folger's coffee can by his chair. Wiping his mouth, he happily launched into a story or two. After finishing one of his tales he smiled showing two rows of his worn teeth and said, "I might lie a bit to make a story interesting, but I don't cheat no one, especially out of a good story."

Speaking of a good story, Mr Bill got up and headed toward his pit, passing an old Zenith radio, that judging by the layer of grease had been on the job for awhile. It was blaring out one of George Straits latest ditties. If he heard the song, he didn't say, for he had much work to do. After all, there's a party today.

As,I departed I heard him say, "Stir around, don't sit to much, it works against you."

Happy life my dear grandfather... His name is William Clarence
Doc

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

Old Hands

Old Man's Hands

Old man’s hands.
Flecked by age.
Lots of scars
From untold combats,
Against himself,and others.
His hands they tell about his life.
Though no one seems to care
About such trifles.
I close my eyes and see:
Women, caressed.
Children, lifted up.
His battles, Loc Ninh in 67’.
His working life
Through pain and pleasure.
Some for better,
Some for worse.
When my time comes;
Will someone
Look at my hands,
And close their eyes?

KB Harris 2011

Front Porch Psychology Series

Our Children

The Sane Asylum Quote Series

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

Ask me something

"Ask me something.  I don't have all the answers, but I will give it a try."

Your Monkey Mind

A funny thing happened on the way to therapy

"If I present you with a new thought, are you intelligent
enough to entertain it's meaning without accepting it?"

The Sane Asylum Quote Series

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

From Inside The Sane Asylum

Cuba revisited

Dado
In resident Photographer
The Sane Asylum

P.S. Captured on a recent trip to Cuba

The Sane Asylum Nature Series

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two
chemicals substances. If there is a reaction both are transformed.

Jung
The Red Book

Stopped to Ponder

"The greatest weapon against stress is your ability to choose
one thought over the other."

William James

A funny thing happened on the way to therapy

"It is the way you treat others that matter the most. In that way
that you treat others is the way they become."

Ego