1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs: respect for self; respect for others; responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

Via Deborah Lee.

You see flag-lions playing in the wind,
leaping about, but you don’t see wind.

You can say if it’s an east wind or a west,
healthy or destructive, but little else.

The body is like the lion of the banner.
Vital weather blows and makes it dance,

and then die down. The flag-lion
drops its haunches and looks up.

There is an invisible reality
the closed eye sees in dream,

a sun and a moon. Spirit, a perfection,
shines inside our nights and days.

Sleep is death’s brother, but there are
many varieties of sleep. Learn about them!

Some people behold, sleeping, representations
of an awareness they will not reach, awake,

for twenty years. They run to scholarly
dream-interpreters, more out of curiosity

than anything else. Stay in the root
of your dream. Don’t climb out on

intellectual branches. We need robust elephants
who lay down lost in a vision of Hindustan.

Remember and return are not pulling everyone,
just those deep-desiring elephants.

Donkeys never dream of India. But you can become
an elephant, even if you’re a donkey now!

Unseen alchemists speak of this in your ear
every moment. Listen to them. Feel

their touchings. Discover the new healing
plants that come up at dawn. Study

the life of Ibrahim, who changed suddenly
because of what he saw in his sleep.

He cut the ropes that held him and began wandering,
as Muhammed said, somewhere between the sad

attachments of the senses and a pure
union with light. Your own transformation,

like the play of wind with a flag, moves
in you now, that near, that simple.

—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, 1207-1273

A little more than a year ago, when The Republic moved to Chelsea, I was looking for supplies to make some Mechanicals.

I wandered into a small, impossibly cluttered stationary store around the corner called Boro Art. The place predates the influx of affluence and commerce to the area, and rests quietly beside one of the largest trees on the block. The owner was sitting at his desk, surrounded by papers, and beckoned me to come in and sit with him.

We (he, really) talked for an hour, and I was not at all prepared for such an intense encounter with wisdom. Beyond the fact that I was on a mission for double-sided tape, my worldview was such that I simply wasn’t available at all times. It pains me to type those words, and this marks them as true.

A lot of the conversation I took in a comical way; the fire in his eyes threw me off. But one story in particular stayed with me, a parable about a mouse. I repeated it to anyone that would listen in the days afterwards, so taken was I with it.

Today, I took a lunch break from packing the office (the shop is moving at the end of this week) to eat at La Taza de Oro, easily my favorite lunch spot in the neighborhood. Strolling back, I saw the green awning of Boro Art and flashed back to that conversation.

I considered the distance between then and now, and marveled at how long—and short—one year can be.

And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember how the parable went. I’d lost it. I looked in the open door of the shop, and through a narrow aisle between shelves bent and groaning under the weight of haphazardly stacked stationary supplies, sat the owner. Just as he was, a year prior.


The parable is still worth sharing. The rest of our conversation, I’ll keep within.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, 1207-1273

I passed by something new at the Flea this past weekend: an empty tent with a woman in sunglasses, a deck of cards, and a small folding table.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in tarot readings. I’ve only had a couple very casual, unstructured experiences with them previously. Let’s look at the cards and see what we see, that sort of thing.

This was different: she closed her eyes, put much deliberation into feeling her way through the cards, and she interpreted them with authority.

She told me she’s been doing tarot readings for 16 years. Some of what was said rings true, some not so much. Either way: last Saturday, this was what the cards had to say.

I’m curious to pop back in next week; at a buck a minute, it’s hard to decline.