On art

Art is disciplined exhibition.

Triumph

Triumph trumps all that thwarts.

As I am

I began as I am;
may I end so.

Stingy

The universe is stingy with infinity.

Which thread

Even when you decide to destroy, you pick which thread you want to pull.

The present moment (Kundera)

There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment.  And yet it eludes us completely.  All the sadness of life lies in that fact.  In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head.  Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.

Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel

On beauty

Beauty is the discovery of beauty.

So changed (Lucretius)

Anything so changed it isn't bounded any more
By its own limits, dies right then to what it was before.

Lucretius (A. E. Stallings, trans.),
The Nature of Things

New poems

+15

Our story (Walter)

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character—what we believe—none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!

Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

Just

Don't be sorry, just be smart.

A life (Walter)

And as he faces the horizon, we realize that maybe it's all any of us can hope to do. Survive. Caught in the raging crosscurrents of history, of sorrow, and of certain death, a man realizes he is powerless, that all his belief in himself is a vanity...a dream. So he does his best, he squirms against the snow and the wind and his own animal hungers, and this is a life. For family, for love, for simple decency, a good man rages against nature, and the brutality of fate, but it is a war he can never win. Every love is the same love, and it is overpowering—the wrenching grace of what it is to be human. We love. We try. We die alone.

Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

"Enough"

I'm very pleased to report that Open Letters Monthly has accepted my poem "Enough" for publication in their August edition! I've been in a bit of a drought lately, so this is very welcome news.

Stories (Walter)

Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story.... Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we're less alone.

Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

Awareness

Release patriotism before it becomes necrophilia.

A moment like this (Stamone)

Every story is a dead-end, you always arrive at a moment like this. So what to do, go back, start again? Even though you’re old enough to know that every story, sooner or later, slams up against the last word?

Domenico Starnone, Ties

New poems

+12

With the moment (Walter)

Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life—not so much with the woman, whom he didn't even know, but with the moment.

Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

Surprising

What is often most surprising in other people is their susceptibilities.

Not everything

There is so much in everything—
but not everything.

On time

Time is inferred,
not felt.

Failure

Failure to forgive
indicates a lack of love
or a festering wound.

Changing the world (Einstein)

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking.  It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

Albert Einstein

New poems

+14

On reality

Reality only has to be real, not plausible.

How much

How much can I question
with assertion?

The Uncanny Valley (Anders)

The reason the Uncanny Valley exists is because humans created it to put other people into. It's how we justify killing each other.

Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

New poems

+11

First person (Bishop)

But we are lured into believing that the first person is the manifestation of an authentic self. Or: we fall for the first person because we feel so little coherence in our own internal lives, and immersing ourselves in a sustained first person narrative gives us the false reassurance of an illusion. Only we forget that this is what that is, which is, of course, part of the appeal.

Stephanie Bishop

A choice

To be given a choice is to be given a chance.