Recategorized

What is not penalized must be recategorized as permitted.

Most

Most compensation is issued for acts unethical and antisocial.

On self

Self is a case of mistaken identity.

The ultimate, hidden truth of the world (Graeber)

The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.

David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules

On the supernatural

The supernatural is a category error.

We will find a way

No matter how simply life presents itself, we will find a way to complicate it.

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On knowledge

Knowledge is always a reaction.

A perfectly good life

A perfectly good life can be a torment if it's not the life you want.

The idea of people

The idea of people is the best idea ever.

We are determined

We are determined to pretend there's a side to pick.

Pretense

Pretense can also be a pretense.

No one can love

No one can love who can't love themselves.

Not obliged (O'Brian)

One of the great advantages of wealth is that you are not obliged to eat toads. You can do what you think right.

Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation

Every person

Every person in your life demands that you change a little.

A place

We spend our lives inviting others in to a place none can enter.

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Again

Every dawn we are again exiled from yesterday.

We know

We know never as we can never know forever.

Our instincts

Our instincts are not aligned with reality but with efficacy. Even, perhaps, our instinct to align with reality.

Too restricted

A consciousness too restricted to encompass the world is incapable of a holistic conception or implementation of ethics.

The strange

The strange is strong.

Filtered

Experience filtered through consciousness.

This must end

This must end
so we can begin something else.

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Artists who failed (Greenwell)

My life wouldn’t be my life without any number of artists who failed, in various ways large and small, to be excellent outside their art.

Garth Greenwell

The leading edge

Love is the leading edge of the dumb dome of disappointment.

Something redeemable (Fine)

Would it not be more interesting, more critically alert or generative, to find something redeemable about this thing that repels me? Would it not suggest that I am, in some way, capable of exceeding myself?

Zachary Fine

My hatred

I reserve my hatred for those who willfully damage or destroy something good.

Sometimes

Sometimes not good enough is good enough.
But do you really want to risk it?

Celestial reality

Celestial reality is more venerable
than celestial fantasy.

Find a buoy

Find a buoy if you want to float.

Life

Life is not just being alive.

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On books

A mediocre book speaks to you;
a better book speaks of you.

Never trust

Never trust what trends
toward the trivial.

Every line

Every line contains an answer
and three questions.

The true horror of existence (Exurb1a)

   The true horror of existence is not the certainty of death, nor the threat of hell, but the knowledge that we will likely go our entire lives as impossibly complex machines, walking about in an impossibly complex universe, and never truly discover what it was all for.

   I don't know is brave.  I'll never know is heroic.

Exurb1a, Geometry For Ocelots

On poetry

Poetry is perceived from a viewpoint slightly askew.

No whim

It is no whim that compels me
to defend whimsy.

The tools

The tools that prove useful in the escape may not be the same tools that built the cage, the walls, the piranha-filled moat.

The one who entertains us

We love the one who entertains us beyond all others.

I would rather

I would rather feel what I say than say what I feel.

On hunger

Hunger is sadness plus anger.

Plot is the lie

Plot is the lie that we love the best.

Error, too

Error, too, is an engine.

The first thing

The first thing we need to improve is our ability to identify what needs to be improved.

Culture

Culture shouldn't have a cost.

Tainted

Words don't become tainted,
but minds do.

Sense

Sense is a construct of context.

Intimacy

Intimacy is discontinuous.

Less ethical

There is little less ethical than the work ethic.

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A poor affection (Cavalli)

It's a poor affection that never becomes manifest in an act.

Patrizia Cavalli

Run out

Time doesn't run out.
We run out.

Screws everything

Obsession with sex,
or resisting obsession with sex,
screws everyone up.

Is true

It is true that nothing is true.

Everything

Everything is preparation
for nothing.

Seduced

Once seduced, I stay seduced.

The problem

Media is not the problem.
Our response to media is the problem.

Signal

Signal is just noise that we acknowledge.

On poetry

Poetry orders the disordered and disorders the ordered.

On psychology

All psychology is an explication of habit.

My greatest regret

My greatest regret is having complied with the unexpressed preferences of those on divergent trajectories.

Lurid flaws

Lurid flaws are popular these days, and we are encouraged to accommodate them.

The future lies

The future lies in symbiosis.

Sentience

Sentience is distinguished by intent.

AIs don't have to

AIs don't have to achieve perfect cognition; they only have to exceed that of humans.

In beauty

Everything spirituality seeks
exists in beauty.

Free will

If there is no free will,
then it is not up to us
whether or not we embrace
the illusion of free will.

How little of me

How little of me actually originated with me.

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Continual waking

There is no "woke," only continual waking.

Irrefutable

Life provides irrefutable evidence
that That Which Says No
is a far more potent force in the world,
in our experience of the world,
than That Which Says Yes.

Progress is slow

Progress is slow when people insist on taking the wrong lessons from everything.

Poetry's purpose (Cronin)

Poetry’s purpose is not to get there.

M.T.C. Cronin

Flow

Flow beyond flaw.

California Quarterly

Received my copy of the Summer 2023 (Volume 49, Number 2) issue of California Quarterly, which contains my poems "You are on the river, drifting" and "After 2." Looks great!

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