A Conversation with Pablo Neruda

ME: Oh Mr Neruda, Pablo!…. (offers him a glass of wine)…I can’t believe we’re having this conversation - I’ve loved your poetry for as long as I can remember, and to be actually having a conversation with you is unbelievable!!.

PABLO: Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread……on our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity."

ME: Yes, but YOU write like you’re on fire - what kind of things inspire that passion? people? books? places?.

PABLO: To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. The books that help you most are those which make you think the most.

ME: Powerful!!

PABLO: The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty…. and the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

ME: (sighs) perfectly stated – but then again there’s your own particular brand of magic that for me transcends everything else – can you explain that a little bit more please?

PABLO: My poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests…..I want to see thirst in the syllables….. tough fire in the sound; feel through the dark for the scream.

ME: Gosh, you’ve certainly achieved that!

PABLO: While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.

ME: (mulls that over)…. Hmmmmm..ok – I have to confess I’m crazy about your love poetry, just feeds my romantic soul totally!!.....would you like another drink??

PABLO: I like on the table when we're speaking, the light of a bottle of intelligent wine."

ME: Oh me too!!, thank goodness you’re here! (smiles)

PABLO: Love is the mystery of water and a star. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

ME: Such a huge influence you are in the world of romantic poetry – your place in the universal halls of brilliant poetry is assured – the praises of millions about your wonderful poetry – not enough words really to do your life’s work justice!!.

PABLO: About me, nothing worse they will tell you, my love, than what I told you

ME: Oh fiddlesticks Pablo!! - Pam Munez Ryan summed you up perfectly for me when she wrote “Pablo Neruda's poems tramped through the mud...knocked at the doors of mansions...sat at the table of the baker...The shopkeeper leaned over his counter and read them to his customers...The poems became books that people passed from hand to hand. The books travelled over fences. and bridges. and across borders. soaring from continent to continent. until he had passed thousands of gifts through a hole in the fence to a multitude of people in every corner of the world."

PABLO: "Hay algo más tonto en la vida - Que llamarse Pablo Neruda?

ME: which means please?

PABLO: Is there anything more insane in this life than being called Pablo Neruda?

ME: Yes, for me, absolutely there is!!, to have never had that insanity in my life. (smiles)

Edgar Allan Poe

Me:
Thank you Mr Poe, for giving me a few moments of your time to hopefully get an insight into the brilliance of your life in terms of your great literature – you are a legend you know.(smiles)

E.A.Poe:
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

Me:
Hmmm, yes well, I’d certainly question some of the intellects I have the misfortune to interact with - I read somewhere that Henry Charles was quoted as saying “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection. Baudelaire thought him a profound philosopher.... Poe was much the greater charlatan of the two, as well as the greater genius.” – You have a comment to make on his comment?

E.A.Poe:
There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago - Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

Me:
I most certainly shall, thank you for that…do you mind very much if we talk about your poetry?

E.A.Poe:
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty. With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

Me:
That’s a truly beautiful way to put it (sighs)…It’s been said and is I suppose reflected in a lot of your work - that much of it is due to your concern of romanticism with the occult and the satanic – that it owes much also to your own feverish dreams, to which you applied a rare faculty of shaping plausible fabrics out of impalpable materials.

E.A.Poe.
(repeats) Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear….If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered - I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream….Invisible things are the only realities

Me: (shivers) You’re making me go all goose bumpy!!.

E.A.Poe.
The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be - There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. There are moments when even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of Hell. Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Me: I know , I know “believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear” but you have been described as having a lack of principles, irritable, self centred, unstable…blah, blah, blah….What that really does though just enhances your mana ( one of my culture’s words meaning esteem/prestige). (smiles)

E.A.Poe:
In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me. Stupidity is a talent for misconceptions (Me nods in agreement). To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness (Me sensed a cheeky wink here)

Me:
Your sensitivity to the beauty and sweetness of women inspired in your lyrical works*(To Helen, Annabel Lee, Eulalie, To One in Paradise* and the full-toned prose hymns to beauty and love in Ligeia and Eleonora tells me a lot about the romantic Mr Poe – care to share a little on this?

E.A.Poe:
“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world -sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears - there are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.

Me:
What could I ever say to ever come close to trying to express with such eloquence, anything, as wonderful as you have?…this has been an experience I will never forget – and I’d like to leave the last words to you Mr Poe please….

E.A.Poe:
It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams - the ninety and nine are with dreams, content, but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

Me: *whispers* PERFECT!

Barak Obama

(This is my tribute to President Barack Obama - who is alive and well and making a difference to our world.)

ME: Mr President, to me you are everything the world has said you are in terms of a great leader and I could not resist creating an opportunity to explore your life through the eyes of the world via this surreal interview between you and me…. I thank you for the magic of your brilliant inspiring words and thank those who recorded them that has allowed me to respectfully put this together for my own love of you as a great world leader and for those millions who know that change will come to your great country through your leadership. I would like to know what it is that drove you and inspired you, to pursue your dreams.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:
I usually have a minute to sit quietly and collect my thoughts - and recently, I’ve found myself reflecting on what it was that led me to public service in the first place.

ME:
Where do you believe the starting point for those reflections began?.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:
In Chicago - but I am not a native of that great city. I moved there when I was just a year out of college, and a group of churches offered me a job as a community organizer so I could help rebuild neighborhoods that had been devastated by the closing of steel plants.
The salary was $12,000 a year plus enough money to buy an old, beat-up car, and so I took the job and drove out to Chicago, where I didn’t know a soul. And during the time I was there, we worked to set up job training programs for the unemployed and after school programs for kids.

ME:
So you worked at the grassroots as they say – that is something I personally can relate to, my work in community law takes me constantly to those social issues.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was the best education I ever had, because I learned in those neighborhoods that when ordinary people come together, they can achieve extraordinary things.

ME:
I believe around that time you also visited your relatives in Kenya. You had a very emotional experience when you visited the graves of your biological father and paternal grandfather.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. I saw that my life in America—the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago—all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away.

ME:
…and that sad experience would have added to your passion and commitment to make a difference. Did you work very long in Chicago?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: After three years, I went back to law school. I left there with a degree and a lifetime of debt, but I turned down the corporate job offers so I could come back to Chicago and organize a voter registration drive. I also started a civil rights practice, and began to teach constitutional law.

ME: So the inspiration to a possible career in politics began there?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: After a few years, people started coming up to me and telling me I should run for state Senate. So I did what every man does when he’s faced with a big decision – I prayed, and I asked my wife. And after consulting those two higher powers, I decided to get in the race.

ME: Hmm.. you must have made an amazing impression – so what happened next, what kind of a reaction did you get as you started moving into the political arena?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Everywhere I’d go, I’d get two questions. First, they’d ask, “Where’d you get that funny name, Barack Obama?” Because people just couldn’t pronounce it. They’d call me “Alabama,” or they’d call me “Yo Mama.” And I’d tell them that my father was from Kenya, and that’s where I got my name. And my mother was from Kansas, and that’s where I got my accent from.
And the second thing people would ask me was, “You seem like a nice young man. You’ve done all this great work. You’ve been a community organizer, and you teach law school, you’re a civil rights attorney, you’re a family man – why would you wanna go into something dirty and nasty like politics?

ME: And what did you have to say to those?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I understand the question, and the cynicism. We all understand it. We understand it because we get the sense today that politics has become a business and not a mission. In the last several years, we have seen Washington become a place where keeping score of who’s up and who’s down is more important than who’s working on behalf of the American people. We have been told that our mounting debts don’t matter, that the economy is doing great, and so Americans should be left to face their anxiety about rising health care costs and disappearing pensions on their own.

ME:
When you took office you inherited a global economic recession, two ongoing foreign wars and the lowest international favorability rating for the United States ever. Your campaign agenda was deemed to be ambitious – financial reforms, alternative energy, and reinventing education and health care – all while bringing down the national debt…quite challenging decisions to make.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:
The challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. Because these issues intertwined with the economic well-being of the nation, I believed all would have to be undertaken simultaneously. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, they will be met.

ME:
Speaking to you has been just wonderful and if I may I’d like to continue this conversation in the near future if that’s ok – I’d love to know a bit more about the family man behind the powerful public role.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:
I would not be here without the unyielding support of my best friend, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation’s First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love so much, and while she’s no longer with us, my grandmother, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them and my debt to them is beyond measure.

ME:
Mr President this has been an honour beyond anything I have seen or done and barring objections to my using this as my personal tribute to you for the inspiration you have given me I look forward to our next meeting ..do you think we can meet up again soon?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:
Yes we can!

ME:
Thank you.

Dorothy Parker (Dottie)

(For Hugh)

Me: 

It’s wonderful to meet you Miss Parker. I hope you don’t consider being here too much against your better judgement. I have a lovely friend, who writes incredible poetry too, I think he is your biggest fan. I had this immediate curiosity to meet you so I could share this with him.

Dottie:

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was 

against her better judgment. The cure for boredom is curiosity – there is no cure for curiosity.

Me:
Oh I mean curious in the most respectful way I promise. I doubt anything you’ve ever done or said could ever bore me…but my friend really is lovely.

Dottie:
I shudder at the thought of men.... I'm due to fall in love again. By the time you swear you're his, shivering and sighing, and he vows his passion is infinite, undying! Lady make note of this - one of you is lying!. Why is it no one sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose?

Me:
I really don’t know - but no-one could ever shudder at Hugh, he’s a darling…and I don’t fall in love enough to be able to compare notes (giggles)

Dottie:
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose. Be you wise and never sad, you will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, and your wish will come to you-- and if that makes you happy, kid, you'll be the first it ever did. I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

Me: (soaks all that up)
Wow! Well I hope you don’t mind that I’m taking notes. I’m really appreciating things you’re sharing with me, the general aspects of your life etc., just realised there’s a lot I need to learn about love and stuff.

Dottie:
I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true. Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.

Me: (thinking)
Oh, oh…. Ohhhh!

Dottie: (me sensed a raised eyebrow here)
The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue. I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound -- if I can remember any of the damn things, I'd like to have money - and I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money. I’ve never been a millionaire but I know I’d be darling at it. If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you. There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.

Me: (writing furiously)
This is excellent, just hope I don’t miss out anything…

Dottie:
I hate writing, I love having written. I’m never going to accomplish anything; that’s perfectly clear to me. I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.

Me:
Well we both know that’s absolutely not true!! Well maybe the nails thingy but not about you not accomplishing stuff…that is SO not true!!.

Dottie:
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

Me: (laughs)
I don’t think they’d appreciate that very much but I shall certainly consider it….I’ve heard you’re quite famous for your wisecracks…you certainly have an incredibly sharp wit.

Dottie:
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply callisthenics’ with words

Me:
Oh I’m sorry, forgive my bad manners - would you like a drink?

Dottie:
I like to have a martini, I wish I could drink like a lady. I can take one or two at the most. Three and I'm under the table. Four and I'm under the host

Me: (widens eyes)
Ohhh….ummm..

Dottie:
Don't look at me in that tone of voice! If I didn't care for fun and such, I'd probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, because I do not give a damn. There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.

Me:
Well that’s jolly inconsiderate!! Do you think over the period of your life, you’ve got everything you’ve ever needed or wanted?

Dottie
Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne

Dottie:
You don’t want a general house worker, do you? Or a travelling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job.

Me: (shocked)
Dottie!! Why on earth would you ask me something like that? I have no doubt you would do all of those and more brilliantly but you’re a legend an absolute legend in the field of literature!!

Dottie:
Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.

Me:
I don’t think my humble abode would suit someone of your stature – my spare room is a mess.

Dottie:
All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

Me: (having a brainwave)
I’ll tell you what – I’ll get in touch with Hugh, he’d probably be more familiar with how to consider your request…he might even have a job for you. I know he’d be really chuffed to be asked. Is there anything else you think I should tell him?.

Dottie:
Salary is no object. I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.

Me:
Great, will do.. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Emily Dickinson

ME:
I’m very grateful to have been given this opportunity to “speak “ to you Miss Dickinson, I pondered a while on how to make an approach to you knowing you were a very private person, and did not like to venture too far from your home. So I gave this a great deal of thought and my friend Hugh gave me a poetic nudge.

EMILY:
“How do most people live without any thought? There are many people in the world,--you must have noticed them in the street,--how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning? I felt it shelter to speak to you.”

ME:
Well, thank you very much, I’m very grateful that you have. I promise not to be too long but based on your life’s writings I’m sure you have a few opinions and truths to share.

EMILY:
“Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun - if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.”

ME:
Hmmm, that certainly makes sense to me.You were known as a very private poet, it is said you wrote nearly 1800 poems but fewer than a dozen were published during your lifetime…tell me why those pieces that were published were usually significantly altered by the publishers?

EMILY:
Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate; behaviour is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes. I don't profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense. Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it.

ME:
I find your poetry quite beautiful but only reached that conclusion after reading it several times – I think it’s because of the era and how people spoke in those times – but once I’d reasonably mastered that I really settled down to read you – I was totally won over and have become another huge fan of your poetry.

EMILY:
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon - poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these. If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

ME:
When you put it like that I have to agree. The one thing I’ve come to learn and be grateful for is to be touched by the wisdom of brilliant writer/poets whose lives I have obsessively researched for no other reason than to feel what it’s like to bask forever in the sweet glow of their greatness.

EMILY:
Forever is composed of nows, I dwell in possibility - saying nothing sometimes says the most - My best acquaintances are those with whom I spoke no word.

ME:
May I ask you to leave me with just one, small gem to hold close to remember this short time we have spent together please?

EMILY:
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--

The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;

For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!”

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

ME:
Goodbye sweet poetess, I’ll never forget this, ever!!.

EMILYy:
I must go in, the fog is rising.

Charles Bukowski

ME: 
I feel compelled to address you as Mr Bukowski, don’t ask me why, I don’t know myself but I just do. I think I’d rather hear you talk about your life rather than read it as written by others. ….but I want to thank you first and foremost for giving me this time to have this chat with you…I promise I’ll keep it brief.

BUKOWSKI:
“I suppose like others I have come through fire and sword, love gone wrong, head-on crashes, drunk at sea, and I have listened to the simple sound of water running in tubs and wished to drown - I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”

ME:
Yes I noticed in a lot of the stuff written about you or by you there’s a lot of this solitude, loneliness thing – and yet you had several relationships throughout your life - I don’t really see you as someone who was ever lonely for long.

BUKOWSKI:
“I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores.”

ME:
And yet you had several relationships with women over the years.

BUKOWSKI:
“In the old days, before I was married, or knew a lot of women, I would just pull down all the shades and go to bed for three or four days. I'd get up to shit. I'd eat a can of beans, go back to bed, just stay there for three or four days. Then I'd put on my clothes and I'd walk outside, and the sunlight was brilliant, and the sounds were great. I felt powerful, like a recharged battery. But you know the first bring-down? The first human face I saw on the sidewalk, I lost half my charge right there.”
“Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other.

ME:
Well I’m still sort of researching into and sorting through lots of amazing geniuses (is that a word?) like yourself and learning some amazing things that have added to my own creative growth – some have incredible wit and senses of humour that make me laugh. I find it very exciting and extremely interesting.

BUKOWSKI
“What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing; and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the whole thing is so ridiculous that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bank robbers, the poets ... are interesting?”
“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

ME:
I know time is running out but tell me a little of your thoughts on writing – I’d love to hear it.

BUKOWSKI:
“I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.”
“Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”
“When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.”

ME:
Every time I look through and read up on the lives of wonderful legends like yourself I often wonder if we could ever be friends – I know you are all out of my league but….I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than hanging out with my muses and just listening to what they say.

BUKOWSKI:
“That's what friendship is, sharing the prejudice of experience.”
“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them.”

ME:
Only in my dreams

BUKOWSKI:
“Baby, in a couple of minutes I'm going to rip off your god damned panties and show you some turkey neck you'll remember all the way to the graveside. I have a vast and curved penis, like a sickle, and many a gutted pussy has gasped come upon my callous and roach-smeared rug. First let me finish this drink.”

ME:
Hahahaha!, only in YOUR dreams….any last words before I head for the hills?? *smiles*

BUKOWSKI:
“In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.”

ME:
See ya!

A Fabulous Forum

ME: 
Ladies and Gentlemen – the honour of facilitating this magnificent forum is mine and I am truly humbled in the presence of such greatness. I welcome you all and wondered if as a theme we might look at life - it is a topic that allows for very robust discussion…Mr Frost, would you like to start please.?

ROBERT FROST:
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” 

JOHN LENNON:
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” 

MARK TWAIN:“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

JUNG:
“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. 

FREUD:“Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks.

JOHN WAYNE:
“Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid.” 


MAE WEST:
“I'm a woman of very few words, but lots of action - you only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

EINSTEIN:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

GROUCHO MARX:
“Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while - I intend to live forever, or die trying.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

AUDREY HEPBURN:
“The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters.” 

EMILY DICKINSON:
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” 

ME:
Hmmmm….an amazing but credible conflict of incredible views…

JOHN LENNON:
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

ME:
What a great response John *smiles* - bet that shut them up!

GROUCHO MARX:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.” 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON
“It is not the length of life, but the depth.” 

MAE WEST:
“It's not the men in your life that matters, it's the life in your men.”

ME: 
 (giggles) Miss West! You are truly incorrigible!

COCO CHANEL:
“You live but once; you might as well be amusing.”

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT:
“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life - the purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

HENRY DAVID THOREAU:
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” 

ME:
I find that incredibly sad Mr Thoreau.

LAO TZU:
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

MARILYN MONROE:
“This life is what you make it. Not matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up - so keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.” 

LANGSTON HUGHES:
“Life is for the living, death is for the dead. Let life be like music - and death a note unsaid.”

ME:
..and that sums it up perfectly Mr Hughes – thank you. Thank you all so very much!. You know I could go an and on forever soaking up all this magic but what I’d like to suggest is we meet again soon and either continue with this topic or maybe someone might want to suggest another one....anyone?

ARISTOTLE:
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” 

SOCRATES:
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

ME:
Ooooooo…so are we saying Philosophy??


ARISTOTLE:
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” 


SOCRATES:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” 


ME:
How exciting! I can’t WAIT until we meet again. I wonder what wonderful things I will learn from that.


SOCRATES
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” 


ME:
I doubt I’ll ever be in the same sphere of wisdom as this illustrious group but I’m grateful for any crumbs from your illustrious table.


MAHATMA GHANDI:
“It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”


ME:
On that profound truth I’d like to close our meeting. Thank you all so very much.