Epigraph: “What is the sound of one hand clapping? Before enlightenment, whoosh, whoosh. After enlightenment, whoosh, whoosh.”
Quiz: What very popular song of a prior decade included the line “One eye will be taken for an eye”? One clue will appear somewhere below.
“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” -William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)
Never be afraid to ask, “What the heck does that mean?” Even if it’s something I wrote.
Inside joke for lawyers: song and dance number for process servers -- “Puttin’ on the Writs.”
Bafflegab in Action! The Journal of the U.S. Federal Reserve System!
Reality can be a harsh teacher. Sometimes it’s easier to deny its existence than to learn its lessons.
Last photo (1997) of Myrna Coleridge Boyle de Nefertiti, taken just before her 19-year disappearance. After being spotted in a 2016 photo (below) accompanying a news story on sulky people who sulk in front of rough-textured walls, Ms. Boyle de Nefertiti said she recalled nothing of the intervening years except that at first it was “wet and cold, so cold” but that lately there had been “many fashionable t-shirts.” She said she looked forward to being reunited with her family and picking up her life where it left off. “I just want to be normal, except for the amnesia,” she said. “And unless it’s a big deal to someone, I’ll probably lose the ‘Myrna.’ I just don’t feel like a Myrna.”
Sasha Coleridge Boyle de Nefertiti (2016)
On the popcorn and potatoes diet, you don’t lose weight, but you never feel hungry.
“You have to fall in love with hanging around words.” ~John Ciardi. Well, you don’t have to, but if you do, it changes your head.
“A word after a word after a word is power.” ~Margaret Atwood
Here are some more alleged African sayings that I can’t wrap my head around. They have a high “Huh?” quotient.
“Treat the days well and they will treat you well.” --Zimbabwean proverb
“You must decide where you are going in the evening if you intend to leave early in the morning.” --Malian proverb
“A small piece of bread given with love is enough to feed hundreds.” --North African proverb. It’s redolent of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
“To lose the way is to learn the way.” --African proverb. Prosaic interpretation: “You learn more from mistakes than from not erring.” Zen interpretation: “Let not knowing the Way be the Way.”
“Food from the people you love is healing.” --Sudanese proverb. No clue. Mom’s chicken soup is penicillin?
All translation is vandalism, but still, these sayings seem a bit thin. The 800-pound gorilla of aphorisms is G.K. Chesterton: “Children are innocent and love justice. Most of us are wicked and prefer mercy.”
Journalists awaiting assignments. What tails they can tell!
“Imagination rules the word.” --Russell Kirk
Reince Priebus lacks the normal fear of death, because he thinks he’s going to Hell, and that it will be an improvement.
“He is who we thought he was. If you want to crown him, then crown him. But he is who we thought he was! And we let him off the hook!”
“The universe is a tapestry on which any point you study with sufficient care turns out to be the center. There is a sense in which every narcissist, every megalomaniac is right. The trouble comes from universalizing something that is true in only one sense.” --Sir Harry O. Triggerman
Was heisst “der Momyotome”? That’s for you, Henri.
“H. sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.” -Joyce Carol Oates, writer (b. 16 Jun 1938). The Golden Calf temptation? The One Ring to Rule Them All temptation?
“Fact: Stomach acid (HCL) is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.” So drink up that glass of razor blades? Pass.
Here’s that promised clue: The same song has the line “I hear the voice of rage and ruin.”
That is all.
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