Who dare to dissent (Eisenhower)

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels—men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

More

You give more as more is given.
You take more as more is taken.

New poems

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Something

I've made something of myself,
but what it is I couldn't say.

I who prospered (Gunn)

I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.

Thom Gunn, from "The Man with Night Sweats"

Holes

When someone kills something good in you, holes open up that can only ever remain empty or fill with something bad.

The future

I spent my whole life looking forward to the future.

But not THIS future.

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Foundational

Which is foundational, clarity or confusion?

In a moment

There is more in a moment than a moment can hold.

Winning (Wallace)

Winning is sweet, in part, not in and of itself, but because you have avoided losing.

Daniel Wallace

Every opinion

Every opinion invites ridicule for being too small.

And now must lose them (Saunders)

     None of it was real; nothing was real.
     Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear.
     These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth.
     And now must lose them.
     I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant.
     Goodbye goodbye good—

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

More that is abstract

The world, to a human mind, has more that is abstract in it than is particular. An excessive focus on the latter reveals a bias that limits terribly consideration (and appreciation) of what is.

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Love (Saunders)

Love, love, I know what you are.

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

All in your mind

The fact that it's all in your mind, even your mind, doesn't diminish it, it exalts it.

What they do

We admire what others do
better than we can.
We adore (or deplore) what they do
that we can't.

Forgotten poet

Give me one forgotten poet
over every remembered soldier.

Never trust

Never trust someone who considers participation interference.

Context

Out of context
comes the complex.

What we do

It's not what we do,
it's what we do despite.

The lowest

Only the lowest
laugh at the earnest.

Is not human

Everything that is not human is true.

Is not

Without an understanding of is,
what can is not mean?

New poems

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Comprehension

Comprehension is a subset of cognition.

In ambiguity

In ambiguity begins
love of the sure.

On art

Art isn't zero sum.

Light

Good will paints the world with light.

On politics (Valery)

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

Defiance

Life is defiance.
The rest is science.

Change (Asimov)

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

Isaac Asimov

In beauty

The world traffics so much in beauty
that we can't believe it doesn't love it.

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But passes (Sheck)

There is no country, faith or sacred cause but passes eventually into slavery and walls.

Laurie Sheck, A Monster's Notes

Inevitably

Worse surrounds best.

On chaos

Chaos is the aggregate of careless choices.
And good ones.

New poems

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Not quite quickie tikka

Tried an online slow cooker recipe for chicken tikka masala. Didn't turn out at all as expected/hoped for, but made a pretty decent generic curry.

On understanding

Understanding arises only through reduction.

Yodeling or something (Holiday)

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, it ain’t music, it’s close order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

Billie Holiday

Know first to look

It is of tremendous value to know how to look and where, but one must know first to look.

A bother (Buson)

On the whole, it is a bother to keep up relationships with people in this world.

Buson

Disparity

Disparity is the mother of despair.

Different

Different is difficult.

New poems

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Magic

Magic was the dream from which technology was born.

On identity

Identity is form, not composition.

Our first

Our first glimpse of beauty never coincides with our first recognition of beauty, our first commitment to beauty.

New poems

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On prophecy (Eliot)

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

How is who

How you are is who you are.

Cannot

Where the heart dwells the mind cannot enter.

Collaboration

The world collaborated with the body
to make the soul.