Until

Choke the obscurantist with fact; make him miserable until he relents.

What history is (James)

That's what history is: the story of everything that needn't have been like that.

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia

Creamy Tortellini, Spinach, and Chicken Soup

From this recipe.

The synthesis (Gunn)

What could I do but seek the synthesis
As each man does, of what his nature is?

Thom Gunn, from "Merlin in the Cave: He Speculates without a Book"

On metaphor

Metaphor, whatever else it may be, is a distancing device.

Wasted

A day in which you learn nothing is a day wasted.

The age (Wilde)

We live in the age of the over-worked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.

Oscar Wilde

New poems

+17

The cage

Perhaps the worst thing is to be smart enough to see the cage but not smart enough to escape it.

Quick 2019 Summation

Books Read:  75
Poems Written:  203

The fewest poems I've written since 2011, but I had a book and a chapbook published, so I guess that's a good tradeoff!

Life

Life is a process, constantly negotiated.
When you're enjoying yourself,
you're on the right track.
When you're miserable,
you've got it wrong.

The barbarians (Cavafy)

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

C. P. Cavafy, from "Waiting for the Barbarians"

A story (Chambers)

Our species doesn't operate by reality. It operates by stories. Cities are a story. Money is a story. Space was a story, once. A king tells us a story about who we are and why we're great, and that story is enough to make us go kill people who tell a different story. Or maybe the people kill the king because they don't like his story and have begun to tell themselves a different one.

Becky Chambers, Record of a Spaceborn Few

On consciousness

Consciousness is an algorithm for calculating the inadequacies of the world.

On ritual

Rituals are routines anointed with pretense.

Soon is now (Chesterton)

We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.

G. K. Chesterton

Things

I don't understand how people can say it doesn't matter how they treat things.  Yes, things are not conscious and don't know how you treat them. But you know, and it affects who you are and who you will become.

Before

Before you decide what you think should be, make sure you understand what is.

Simply is (Harrow)

Once we have agreed that true love exists, we may consider its nature.  It is not, as many misguided poets would have you believe, an event in and of itself; it is not something that happens, but something that simply is and always has been.  One does not fall in love; one discovers it.

Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Wine cake

Mom's birthday cake this year. Was delicious!