The struggle

We struggle to make sense of
what doesn't struggle.

Until you have understood

You can't do everything it takes to win
until you have understood that you might lose.

New poems

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It can happen (Levi)

It happened, therefore it can happen again:  this is the core of what we have to say.  It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.

Primo Levi

Matters

It matters that it doesn't matter.

Aspiration

Aspiration is appetizer
to accomplishment's feast.

The study

The study of humanity
leads to self-loathing.

About being ruled (Lucas)

There's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled.

George Lucas

To ask

To ask "Why is there what there is?" is to ask "Why was there what there was?"

On taking

Take only what is replenished or doesn't require replenishment.

The truth

Truth is the smaller infinity.

The engine

Acquisition is the engine of loss.

Conversation

Conversation is civilization.

Time management

Don't erase the past
to direct the future.

So wrong

When the world spends all its time telling us what it is, how do we still get it so wrong?

New poems

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The power (Hirshfield)

But a person who can ask words to do things words have not done before is not powerless. To make phrases that increase what is possible to think and feel is both exhilaration and liberation. To expand reality is to counter despair, depression, and impotence. Anyone who has written a poem surely has felt this. I think of it as the secret happiness of poems. No matter how grief-filled a poem may be in its contents, the making of it allows the poet to drink from the wellspring of freedom—and that increase of freedom and invention cannot help but afford the poet a balancing sense of happiness.

Jane Hirshfield

Even that

Even that which is most full is empty.
Even that most empty is full.

Big bangs (Roberts)

The big bang—that's not a little knot of dynamite, hanging in the middle of a huge empty cavern, exploding to fill it with stars. The cavern, its space, its time, was what was created by the big bang. Every time a consciousness comes into awareness and self-awareness, it's a conceptual big bang. Space and time structure the reality of things anew with each perceiving mind.

Adam Roberts, The Thing Itself

Always also

The puppetmaster, always also a puppet.

A bargain

We are sold so many things today that we become considerably more proficient in recognizing that which is being sold, the seller, and the feeling of being sold to than the typical person of the past. And still, how often we buy, and still, how often we believe we've received a bargain!

Of what has been lost (Sparks)

Sometimes we find a little of what has been lost. Sometimes it is a comfort, sometimes a nightmare. Sometimes it is a mystery, a thing so far removed from now it appears like an alien artifact, singing in the wild of unimaginable kindnesses. These things are written in a language we no longer need, that we no longer believe in. Pages with dog-eared corners, letters dressed with pieces of ribbon and lace, pressed leaves and flowers from earlier walks through woods. Souvenirs of another kind of silence.

Amber Sparks, from "The Fires of Western Heaven"

New poems

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Living forever

We can't imagine living forever because we fail to comprehend the power of change, having experienced so little of it. Acquiescence to oblivion is always a failure of imagination.

On language

Language is always a provocation to emerge
from the silt.