Anyway (Bronk)

We think we should learn from life's teaching us
not to repeat our mistakes. But the doer's not us.
The doer is life and learning's not its concern.

William Bronk

The Fermi Paradox

Genius can never arise in the solitary, for if it does it is not genius but the norm. Perhaps this explains the Fermi Paradox, if all life elsewhere is independent and self-contained and has never been subject to the twin impetus of competition and compromise that drives achievement beyond the level of survival.

Compromised

The entirety of human understanding is compromised by the compulsions of sexual reproduction and its resultant effects, like society.

Fealty (Bronk)

You have to realize fairly soon
the illusion attracting you isn't at all
what you thought it was. After that, stick
with what you've got. Pretend the illusion again
from time to time. You won't make it much
better than that. It's as good as you're going to do.

William Bronk

On security

Security gained at the expense of another is not true security.

Into the liminal (Hirshfield)

For most members of a community, the liminal is a point of transition, entered briefly, at a particular time, in passage toward something else; such persons are dipped into nonidentity and self-forgetfulness in order to change who they are. For some, though, the liminal becomes their only dwelling-place—becomes home. A writer must invent for himself how to live this way.

Jane Hirshfield, from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

A scale of self

Corporatism is neofeudalism. And so, uninterested in being either neolord or neoserf, I must decline any role and go my own way, measuring my productivity by a scale of self.

The choice (Yeats)

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

W. B. Yeats, from "The Choice"

On evil (Rozewicz)

Where does evil come from?
what do you mean “where”

from a human being
always a human being
and only a human being

Tadeusz Rozewicz, from "Unde malum?"

Wildness (Hirshfield)

Such nonnegotiability is one definition of wildness: though genetic near-kin, a caribou treated like the long-domesticated reindeer will quickly die of stress.

Jane Hirshfield, from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Leave it

That which you cannot contribute to meaningfully should be left to others.

Or does it?

A little conflict makes a more satisfying communion.

Conquest

The only honorable conquest is over ignorance.

The choice

The choice: to do less well or more less well.

On war

The lessons taught by war are not those I need to learn.

On Freud

There is so much wishful thinking in Freud,
you'd think he was compensating for an insipid id.

On prayer

What if prayer originated as a practice to strengthen fledgling human self-awareness, only later to be co-opted as a demeaning ritual of pleading and apology to cow the populace? What if prayer and meditation focused the self on the small spark of self and helped it to self-kindle? Even an obsession with delusion concentrates a young identity.

Step out of the way (Hirshfield)

It may be that originality is simply what you step out of the way of; it is what must come if the old ways are dropped, discarded like clothes.

Jane Hirshfield, from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Ideology

Ideology follows commerce.

The Mythological Revolution

The Mythological Revolution is the assimilation of the understanding that myths, whatever their merits or lack thereof, are fictional stories created by people with various motives for various purposes. It must occur independently not only in each culture, but in every person born. Over most of the world, it has yet to take place and establish a dominant role.

The waiting world

When anger and frustration mate,
the world holds its breath and waits.

Question

Question anything that questions what you think you know. Question twice anything that seems to reiterate or reinforce what you think you know.

A token

Don't offer me a token of what you are unwilling to give me.

Surprised (Barbery)

You would be surprised by what ordinary little people come out with. They may prefer stories to theories, anecdotes to concepts, images to ideas—that doesn't stop them from philosophizing.

Muriel Barbery, from The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Confusing

Conservatives don't conserve. Liberals don't liberate.

New poems

+10

The questions

Terrorists who kill in the name of their religion shouldn't surprise us, for they suffer from the same delusion as all religious people who believe their religion has given them answers, rather than providing them with insight into the questions of life.

This world

I have never done without this world. I will never have to. I came into the world slowly. I will never leave it, because "to leave" implies that there is somewhere else to go to. I became here and I will cease here. There are no doors in or out.

No excuse

No amount of received wisdom excuses you from the exercise of your own judgment.

Like a wound

You can drain pleasure from life like pus from a wound, but having done so, you remain wounded.

Race photo

The race officials/volunteers posted some pics of the runners. This is me right before the finish line, about ready to collapse.

New poems

+13

Rail Trail to the Footbridge 5K

Just got back from running my first 5K in 15 years.

Let's just say I finished and I didn't walk and leave it at that!