Faith

Faith is the attitude of the infant, who, not having developed more sophisticated cognitive tools for understanding and influencing his environment, relies upon it for comfort and for shielding from bewildering complexity.

The limits of love

We are compelled to test the limits of love, and in so doing, create them.

Sand (Portante)

it is due to the general indifference of
the grains of sand
that the desert came about
but also because the sand
knew how to remain gregarious

Jean Portante, from "The Desert"

Uncertainty

Uncertainty opens everything.

At ease (Williams)

They were both very shy, and they knew each other slowly, tentatively; they came close and drew apart, they touched and withdrew, neither wishing to impose upon the other more than might be welcomed. Day by day the layers of reserve that protected them dropped away, so that at last they were like many who are extraordinarily shy, each open to the other, unprotected, perfectly and unselfconsciously at ease.

John Williams, Stoner

Art

Art is choice.

Life

Life is more precious than lives.

Memories

Remember that the admonition that "You can't take it with you" applies equally to memories as it does to material goods.

Strategy

Sell a product, make a buck;
Sell a fear, feast for years.

India (Kapuściński)

India is all about infinity—an infinity of gods and myths, beliefs and languages, races and cultures; in everything, and everywhere one looks, there is this dizzying endlessness.

Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels With Herodotus

The plausible

Nothing is easier than to accept the plausible as the true. Nothing is more likely to lead to error.

Questions

Unasked questions are much worse than unanswered ones.

4th Annual Independence Day Poem

At All Costs

We, among the most politically naïve people on earth,

forget that

a vote is predicated upon preference,

not correctness;

we forget the vital idea of the Declaration of Independence,

that every authoritarian, every tyrant,

rules through the consent of the governed

and bureaucratic interference;

we repeat redundant battles in the old war of Reason against Terror

where the soldiers constantly switch sides

and the casualties fall complicit

while we turn blind toward the motives

of those who will do what we are unwilling to:

exchange our rational nation

for rationalization.

            Without the personal arrogance of freedom,

            liberty is a cynical tease;

            where there is no consequence,

            there is no control

            and the instincts of bandits and sycophants go unconquered.

            Our blades are dull and the dogs grow bold.
            At all costs, be insubordinate.