Political Aikido

If good will won't work

back off.

An aggressor toward you

wastes himself.

His hacks, his arm thrusts,

twist them.

An aggressor toward you

hates himself.

His fury outward at you,

bend back.

Just so much his force to send,

used up.

Tyrants fall, their systems

thin sticks.


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High Aesthetics

Beauty is as ugly does.

Differing Schools Of Thought

There are two groups who've tried to analyze what I do:

Those who think I talk too little, and those who think I talk too much.

They're both wrong.

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Nostradamus, Nearly

1

To read what's next, read what's now

To read what's now, read what was

2

Prophecy:  the present condemning the present

3

Too much future, not enough time

(art work: Katherine Venturelli)

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Spoiler Alert

The one to stay alive is the blind man able to discern between a 5- and a 10-dollar bill.

The Low-Down Lab

Getting the arts

Down to a science

Buries both

Understate, My Dear Boy, Always Understate

To say People are imperfect

Only smells the soup without tasting it.

To taste the soup

Exacerbates one's own imperfections.

Two Ways Of Looking At The Quibbler

The Bad Critic:

1)  a sarcast who hasn't learned how to hold back defending against what he expects will be reprisal.

2) one who lowers everyone else to the muddy level of self-esteem he feels himself not even worthy of.

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Pucker Up

Words and truth meet

When sour is the new sweet

could mean:

a) People always lie;

b) Language can never yield the truth;

c) Only language has the capacity to see truth beyond the obvious

d) Truth ever changes

e) Truth lies in the resolution of opposites

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Shut My Mouth!

The strictly honest man -- should such exist outside the hypothetical -- has no friends.

Those with a coterie need to inspect all close motives.

Red Blood, Blue Bruise

Anarchy:  oppression through self-determined, unsanctioned force alone.

Nihilism:  oppression through paradoxically reified Anarchy.

Galileo Accidento

Going out of your way to be wrong.

With that perversity of testing tradition, you lose a nose --

or build a new mind.


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Full Counsel

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Intellect should be only one advisor of many


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Assorted Bon-Bons

1)  Hindsight:  regret at former wonder, the wonder of regret.

2)  Churches silence.

3)  If I hear woulda, shoulda, coulda one more time . . . !

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Teeter-Totter

Let me keep my illusions until the end


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Statistical Certainty Of Statistical Abuse

Give them a razor, it cuts

Give them a bullet, it shoots

Give them a bomb, it explodes

Give them a number, it does the same

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Kensho

Strike a match, believe it not lit

Your finger tells you different

The Limits of 'Objectivity'

'Facts' themselves may be --

But used on you and me.


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Ego Discipline

Punish what I fear most to see in myself in order to become what I don't yet -- and may never -- deserve to be.

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Guest Of Shakespeare, Ghost Of Stevens, Geist Myself

Mastery:

The realization that even a master sometimes can't strike fire from a wet match.

That no one's reading.

That reading never was what it was thought to be and that only now that glancing is the skill do we see that it was all along.

That art skips from its focused impulsion to artifact at c speed, and back from shard to inspiration at the stillbirth rate of neolithic dirt men.

That stumbling and tumbling to sing every day without pain is what we want

Waking without a weight

That any idea may just be rationalization.

That the zen of it is that the world both isn't and is

That we're both here and not

Blinking and mugging and ruling it all


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