The gifts

Why do we seem to value the gifts more when their originations are obscured?

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How much of individualism

How much of individualism is being wrong in uncommon ways?

Madness is

Madness is either a reaching for or a pushing away. Sanity, too.

What I regret most

What I regret most is my regret.

It is surprising

It is surprising that we are still surprised so often.

What would it mean

What would it mean to want optimally?

If you must do a thing

If you must do a thing indifferently, do not do it. Refuse the doing of it enthusiastically.

Find something new

When the current won't suffice, find something new. As many times as it takes.

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Occasionally

I must occasionally receive the unobtainable.

Nothing

Nothing I leave will matter, nothing I take will be missed.

I will write

Even late into December I will write the poems of spring.

I must

I must vary invariably.

Posing

I am the virtue posing as the vice.

All my initial illusions

All my initial illusions have dispersed.

Right there

The output of the right outlook is right there.

Intent

Intent is an accident.

Consciousness

Consciousness is recursion.

Do you ever wonder

Do you ever wonder how many words have been created and lost?

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Too loud

The question is too loud; the answer, so soft.

True ambition disdains

True ambition disdains the frame of futile action promoted by others.

I don't think poetry should be

I don't think poetry should be much concerned about alienating or offending. In fact, I think that's probably an important part of its mandate.

It is not productive

It is not productive to embrace productivity.

Remember

Remember, chance is fickle even when it favors.

If you can't

If you can't get to wisdom, at least push to witness.

A reasonable person

A reasonable person might infer a cost attendant to the free activity of unreasonable persons.

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Fools

The fool's fool may be the wise man, but is probably just another fool.

The command

The command has always been to disregard the commandment (not to "disobey," disobedience being almost as servile as obedience).

Again and again

Don't concern yourself over doing the same thing again and again, just be sure to be perpetually adding new things into the mix.

I try

I try not to worry about how much I worry.

Fruit

I have less interest in forbidden fruit (a category I barely acknowledge, in any case) than in hidden fruit.

On intelligence

Intelligence cannot be created. Only the conditions for the emergence of intelligence can be created.

To watch freedom die

To watch freedom die, close your eyes.

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It must mean something

It must mean something that we so often overestimate how good someone is, so rarely how bad they are.

On discontent

Discontent is never idle.

I blame language

I blame language for my ability to blame language.

You struggle with my abstractions

You struggle with my abstractions because you approach them abstractly.

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In structure

Function is in structure.

Not aphorism

Not aphorism but enphorism.

We are bad even

We are bad even with myths discharged of meaning.

The most unpleasant path

Following all the false promises will get you, eventually, to truth, but it is the most unpleasant path.

To write poetically

To write poetically you must first think poetically, and thinking poetically will lead to seeing poetically, and the first thing you must see is that no one can tell you how to see poetically.

What I regret

I regret not what I did, or even what I didn't do, but what I wasn't allowed to do. Not poor choice, but lack of choice.

What can our minds do

What can our minds, pattern-recognition filters, do with the pattern of no-pattern?

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Physicality

Physicality, too, is philosophical.

Our existing models

It's not just that we haven't yet modelled the things that we don't apprehend or comprehend, it's that our existing models can actually block or otherwise interfere with our ability to create and utilize the new models that we would require to successfully engage with (or even to conceive of) them.

The parts I dislike most

But the parts of humanity that cannot be modelled persuasively on a computer are the parts I dislike most.

Overconfident

There is not always a why. But we feel compelled to look for one. The fact that we find so many makes us overconfident.

What consciousness is

Consciousness is the conversion of data into aesthetics.

Tell me what you expect

Tell me what you expect of me so I can begin to engineer your disappointment.

To others

You must look at others to see your shortcomings.

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By me

Everything I do has never been done before, because it has not been done by me.

If everything is real

If everything is real, then that includes the claim that not everything is real, as well as the claim that nothing is.

More absurd

It seems that the simple is more absurd than the complex.

Sorry, Bartleby

Not "I would prefer not to," but "I would prefer to prefer to."

On complexity

It is not that my worldview has always been so complex; it is that, increasingly, I have had to search within the complex in my effort to discover (or, failing that, establish) sense.

Advice

Slow the pilgrim, speed the wanderer.

Our answers

Our answers are less constitutive of our being than our questions.

A frisky firefly

The poem is a courtesy, a frisky firefly released into the void.

The measure of a life

The measure of a life may lie in what we lose when we die.

Pity the intellect

Pity the intellect routine in its spontaneity.

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My poetry

My poetry seeks to calculate flux while modelling form.

Certainly

A certain uncertainty is preferable to an uncertain certainty.

I love words best

I love words best because words are uniquely willing to accommodate my will.