Joshua Oakley's Page

About Me/Us:

I was born in the valley west of the Misty Mountains of Appalachia in America. My ancestors were from Scotland & Ireland, yet my great great grandmother was Cherokee Native American. I like to think of myself as part Native American, partly because it is hard many times not to feel guilty & ashamed as Frank Zappa said for being white. Considering the history of Western Civilization over the past five hundred plus years, we have a long way to go to make good on the promise of idealistic language & goals of true freedom, peace, justice, sustainability, truth, beauty, etc. that our country & culture espouses here in the West. On a related note, I often feel compelled to take the side of those I perceive as the oppressed in a conflict / argument. The whole world depends on us changing. To be continued . . . .

Relationship Status:

Single

Movies

Fantasy, Science Fiction, French New Wave, Dark Comedies,Existential Film Noir, Anime.

Sergio Leone, Fellini, Scorcese, Ingmar Bergman, Goddard, Truffaut,Luis Bunuel, Melville, Stanley Kubrick.

Children of Paradise, Le Samourai, Blade Runner, The Neverending Story, Once Upon a Time in the West, Zardoz, A Woman Is A Woman,Stolen Kisses, Belle de Jour, L'avventura, Jules et Jim, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, The Phantom of Liberty, The Man Who Fell To Earth,Ziggy Stardust, 8 1/2, Juliet of the Spirits, Labyrinth, Clash of the Titans, Star Wars, Transformers: The Movie (1983), Matrix, Explorers,The Seventh Seal, Through A Glass Darkly, Amarcord, The Saragossa Manuscript, Hour of the Wolf, Fellini's Satyricon, The City of Lost Children, Alphaville, Amelie, Holy Mountain, Fantastic Planet, Faust,Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, La Dolce Vita, Wild Strawberries, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Legend, Krull, Time Bandits, The Hidden, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, They Live, Willow, Brazil,The Last Temptation of Christ, Barton Fink, Taxi Driver, The Big Lebowski, The Hudsucker Proxy, Pi: Faith in Chaos, Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Fountain, Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly, The Princess Bride, The Fifth Element, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Dark City, The Abyss, Highlander, Gattaca, Subway, Howl's Moving Castle.

Television

Battlestar Galactica, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job, Tom Goes To The Mayor, British House of Commons, Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis, Weeds, Twin Peaks, 30 Rock, Venture Bros., Avatar: The Last Airbender

Music

Vangelis, Van der Graaf Generator, Dead Can Dance, Bob Dylan,David Bowie, Queen, Brian Eno, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, John Coltrane, Ravi Shankar, Nick Cave, Black Sabbath, T. Rex, Devendra Banhart, Talking Heads, Velvet Underground, Beatles, Rolling Stones,Roxy Music, Of Montreal, Jefferson Airplane, U2, Prince, and many many many more....

Books

Margaret Mead, Alan Moore, William Shakespeare, William Blake,William Butler Yeats, Pablo Neruda, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, C.G. Jung, Michel Foucault, Jorge Luis Borges, Gregory Bateson, Arthur Koestler, Friedrich Nietzsche, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, W.H. Auden,Robert Graves, Aristotle, Plato, Joseph Campbell, Herman Hesse,Jiddu Krishnamurti, Roger Zelazny, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, M. John Harrison, Sophocles, Sri Aurobindo, Rainer Maria Rilke, Dylan Thomas,Soren Kierkegaard, Lao Tzu, Walt Whitman, William James, Heraclitus,Parmenides, Eratosthenes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rumi, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Hermes Trismegistus, Richard Wilhelm,Robert Louis Stevenson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoy, Edgar Allan Poe, Petronius, Jean Cocteau, Chuang Tzu,Charles Baudelaire, Ursula K. Le Guin, Blaise Pascal, Arthur Rimbaud,Israel Regardie, George Santayana, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz,Ervin Laszlo, Douglas Hofstadter, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell,Alan Watts, and many other writers....

Favorite Books:

Ramayana, Tao Te Ching, Mahabharata, Invisibles, Sandman, Martian Chronicles, Alchemist, Shambhala: Path of the Sacred Warrior, Dune,Hobbit, Silmarillion, Lord of Light, Light, Princess Bride, From Hell, V: For Vendetta, Watchmen, and many more amazingly good books....

Heroes

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.

Every moment of your life is infinitely creative, and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you. - Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing. - William Butler Yeats

By Being, It Is. - Parmenides

Without music, life would be a mistake. - Nietzsche

When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear; when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them. - Chief Seattle

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. - Carl Jung

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
- Albert Einstein

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. - Rene Descartes

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. - Richard Feynman

Then he said 'Remember Bob, No Fear, No Envy, No Meanness'" "And I said 'hmmm, right.' - Bob Dylan

The reverse side also has a reverse side.
- Japanese Proverb

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep. - William James

If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do... How would I be? What would I do? - Buckminster Fuller

The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge.... - Sri Aurobindo

The Self alone exists; / and the Self alone is real. / Verily the Self alone is the world, the I-I and God. / All that exists is but the manifestation of the Supreme Being. - Ramana Maharshi

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Krishnamurti

Website:

http://joshuastarlight.wordpress.com