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.

Ernest Hemingway

ME:
Thank you for your time Mr Hemingway – this is a great honour. I am just one of millions of fans who love your writing. The movies were great but really don’t do justice to your books at all in my honest opinion.

HEMINGWAY:
“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

ME:
Hmmm I never thought of it in that context – interesting.
Before I forget I need to ask this for a friend of mine. He asked me to ask you if you think that your style of writing while standing up would help with his writing being that he has broken his right hip twice and walks with a limp.

HEMINGWAY:
“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it - don't cheat with it - the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places; the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector!”

ME:

Wow! I think he will feel his question well and truly answered, thank you.
Tell me, what kind of things inspire you to write?

HEMINGWAY:

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way - as a writer, you should not judge, you should understand”

ME:

Well, I know it’s the magic way you have with words that keeps me captivated.

HEMINGWAY:

“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time - after writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love; in order to write about life first you must live it!”

ME:

Hmmm….some times people question me about how I learned to write the way I do.

HEMINGWAY:

“It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way!”

ME:

Aha! Thank you….that’s great advice, you have great wisdom sir.. (smiles)

HEMINGWAY:

No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise, they grow careful - live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual!!”

ME:

I hope you don’t mind I’ve made a few notes - if I don’t I’m worried I might forget and I’d never forgive myself!!.

HEMINGWAY:

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can, but train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything. 

ME:

Thank you so much , though you’re life may have ended tragically, you have attained immortality through your wonderful writings – thank you so much for sharing a few minutes with me – this has been almost a religious experience for me, you wouldn’t like to close our conversation with a small prayer would you??.

HEMINGWAY:

“Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

ME:

Amen!

Robert Frost

ME:  

Thank you for giving me your time Robert I appreciate it very much. I’ve loved your poetry from the moment I read it -  me and the rest of the universe of course!.

ROBERT FROST:  
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.

ME:  
Well your poetry seems to have an effortless quality about it that makes me wish I had the gift of creating beauty with so little effort…however..

ROBERT FROST: 
The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.

You're always believing ahead of your evidence.

What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it.

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have.

Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.

People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?"  

We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets.?

ME: 
*nods*

ROBERT FROST: 
We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

ME: 
I can see the depth of thought that goes into the creation of your work.....it's so based on clear, logic and passion.

ROBERT FROST: 
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. 

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. 

It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a love-sickness.

It is never a thought to begin with.

ME: 
Hmmm....yes, of course, I see. I believe you were also a teacher Robert?

ROBERT FROST: 
I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school, I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you - how many things would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?”

ME: 
Do you mean as in my being able to turn it into a poem or something - quite a few, believe me!

ROBERT FROST: 
Everything I've learned about life can be summed up in three words. Life goes on.

ME: 
Well, I love all your works but I have a soft spot for Fire and Ice, not because it deals with the end of all things, but because it deals with love.

ROBERT FROST: 
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. We love the things we love for what they are.

You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hate-able. It takes brains to see the difference

ME: 
Well I’ve got a few of those, brains I mean - but they don’t always listen. 

I think they will now, after listening to you…and to keep the momentum going me and my brain are going to be reading a lot more of Robert Frost I promise!  *smiles*

ROBERT FROST: 
People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons.

 It's that last twenty-five percent that worries me.

ME: 
Well they're dickheads then!

ROBERT FROST: 
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

ME: 
Exactly! Dickheads!  what this sad world needs is poetry, poetry as you write it – makes life so beautiful – lot of idiots out there wouldn’t know a poem if it jumped and ..you know, bit them on their bum!..

ROBERT FROST: 
Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.

ME: 
And every moment spent listening to you has been totally gold - something I will treasure always, any last further comments of inspiration please Robert?.

ROBERT FROST: 
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.

ME:  That was perfect, thank you very much.

Albert Einstein

ME:
Good morning Professor Einstein, I’ve read that you are a very humble man, you treat everyone you meet with respect and deference – and enjoy passing the time of day with people from all walks of life.

EINSTEIN: 
I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university…I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

ME:
 Well yes but it’s the way you respond to questions, especially questions related to your thoughts and theories – you make them so simple to understand……

EINSTEIN:     
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning…The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science"

ME:
See Professor, that’s what I mean…just in that answer are things to inspire and motivate, I believe, well not just me, the universe I think, that whatever field you chose to devote your life to would not only be the better for it, but mankind as a whole would be truly blessed as a result.

EINSTEIN:     
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music

ME:
Or a man of the cloth, you have amazing views on man and his relationship with God – I think you would have made a brilliant Pope or similar!.

EINSTEIN:     
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

ME:     Ohhh?

EINSTEIN:     
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

ME:     
It’s very obvious you have done some very deep thinking on this, very, very deep indeed!.

EINSTEIN:     
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

ME:     
Would you say that you are a happy person Professor Einstein?

EINSTEIN:     
"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"

ME:  
(smiling)     Nothing I guess!.