On history (Harari)

History isn't a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.

Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Life

Life is too short to commit to anything.
But life doesn't work if you don't.

Hope (Jensen)

Hope can be like a plant that sprouts and grows and keeps people alive. But it can also be a wound that refuses to heal.

Carsten Jensen, We, The Drowned

The seed

Admiration is the seed of disappointment.

Each poem

Each poem reveals its own requirements.  None owe anything to any that came before, nor leave anything to any that follow.

Never confuse

Never confuse the arrogance of the conqueror with the confidence of the civilizer.

Kentucky butter bundt cake

From this recipe.

Continuity

Continuity is the only illusion.

On understanding

All understanding lies in misunderstanding.

Desperation

Desperation does not imbue
a lie with efficacy.

Setting out

The joy of setting out is independent from any idea of destination.

Monsters (Sapkowski)

People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.

Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish

New poems

+15

On hell

Hell is the persistence of the consequences of mistakes.

One subject (Tolstoy)

It is known that man has the ability to immerse himself entirely in one subject, however insignificant it might seem. And it is known that there is no subject so insignificant that it will not expand to infinity, if attention is concentrated on it.

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Insofar

We thrive insofar as we are attracted to what we are attached to.

Hell (Barnes)

Hell is time, isn't that obvious?

Adrian Barnes, Nod

The errors

So many of the errors people make result
from a superficial understanding of language,
a poor parsing of semantics, of connotation.

People change (Ruff)

People do change, but they change in their own time, for reasons that make sense to them. They don't change just because we want them to, or because it would be convenient to our own desires if they did.

Matt Ruff, 88 Names

On tradition

Observe traditions, but don't follow them.

New poems

+15

Intoxicated (Gros)

Was that really me, that dreamy child, that young man intoxicated by worldliness?

Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking