Defense of the general

Why this obsession with the particular? It seems a pose. Why pretend that the general isn't more representative?

New poems

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Life

Life is dying
disguised as growth.

Music (Heyerdahl)

Even music has its merits because it compensates for the great variety of moods and sensations man lost when he abandoned his life in the forest. There is fine music everywhere between moss-covered stones and foliage, and I do not mean the singing of birds and the tinkling of a rivulet: I mean music without sound. Music beyond the eardrums. We have had to create flutes and violins to leave impressions deeper in than the eardrums, where nature used to play.

Thor Heyerdahl, Fatu-Hiva

Change

Everything is always changing
but nothing has ever changed.

Be

While you are, be.

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Possible

Everything is possible
without constraint.

Story

We like story because we are story.

On love

We love to love more than we love anything we love.

The opposite of truth

The opposite of truth is pain.

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The inexplicable

The inexplicable is a challenge, not a promise.

Together

The expected and the accident
together make a treasure.

An economy

Our ambitions, our drive,
may require an economy
that pays for what we don't do.

No-knead challah bread

Following this recipe, I made three loaves (all delicious):

One topped with half poppy seeds and half sesame seeds

one topped with kosher salt

and one with grated pepperoncini asagio cheese.

The mistake (Beckett)

That's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.

Samuel Beckett, from "Texts for Nothing"

Why I write

I write a poem much more to query myself than to express myself.

Orientation

Where you look is where you go.

The light

The light need not defeat the darkness,
only discover a space within it to illuminate.

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Who says this (Beckett)

Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me?

Samuel Beckett, from "Texts for Nothing"

Much

How much is essential but not important.

Curses

There are so many possible curses.
One is to be so fascinated with life
you can't live it.

On culture

Culture is indefensible, the next god to go down.

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Different directions

If everyone is doing the same thing, much effort is being wasted, much activity is redundant. Society benefits from people looking—and moving—in different directions.

Progressivism

The true progressive keeps what is useful or otherwise desirable from the past as he moves forward, for he understands what is lost in loss. Progress is not change for change's sake, but change in response to a perceived need for change.

The sublime (Stevens)

And the sublime comes down
To the spirit itself,

The spirit and space,
The empty spirit
In vacant space.
What wine does one drink?
What bread does one eat?

Wallace Stevens, from "The American Sublime"

General rule

Accept little, embrace less,
but taste everything!

Opinion

Don't settle for having opinions. Try to have opinions worth paying attention to.

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On love

It is easier to love the world than to be loved by it.

Couldn't (Beckett)

Suddenly, no, at last, long last, I couldn't any more, I couldn't go on. Someone said, You can't stay here. I couldn't stay there and I couldn't go on.

Samuel Beckett, from "Texts for Nothing"

Liberation

There are always more to liberate;
there is always more to be liberated from.

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From myself (Stevens)

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

Wallace Stevens, from "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon"

On substitution

It is easier to get someone to accept a substitute if you first get them to forget or discount what is being substituted for.

But first

We will invent gods, but first
we will invent ghosts.

Patterns

When patterns fail, we abandon patterns and, ultimately, pattern. Marrying the arbitrary, we are almost immediately shaken by our incompatibility.

Magic (Crawford)

The appeal of magic is that it promises to render objects plastic to the will without one's getting too entangled with them. Treated from arm's length, the object can issue no challenge to the self.

Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming An Individual In An Age Of Distraction

Choose freedom?

How can freedom come from choice
when we are constantly compelled to choose, and from a constrained set of options?

No one

No one is enough
because no one is everything.

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Memory (Seth)

Memory is a poison; it has sickened my body.
The cleavage of attachment has frayed my mind.

Vikram Seth, from "Summer Requiem"

What we cherish

We cherish the particular accidents we encounter.