Yearly Archives: 2020

90 posts

A Little Good News in a World of Bad News

cardinal

Talking to friends and family on the phone (and neighbors outside—at a distance), I hear the same refrain: These are awful times.

Of course we state the obvious with these four words, but there are two things to consider: These could be worse times, one. And there are silver linings even in the worst of times, two.

Let’s start with the first. As any reader of dystopian fiction can tell you, a pandemic could be much worse than what we are presently experiencing. While Covid-19 kills at a much higher rate than the usual flu viruses (Types A & B) that infect people each winter, imagine where we’d be if the coronavirus were more lethal still.

In Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, for instance, 99% of the world population is wiped out in short order by a virus. Before we leave that sobering number, consider how ill-prepared we were for the present pandemic. Will nations of the world learn their lessons once a vaccine is found for Covid-19 and be better prepared for the next crisis, or will they slip back into complacency and cut programs designed to stockpile and ready ourselves for something even worse?

Now that I’ve depressed you (I fear we each had the same answer to that question, given the “leadership” we’ve seen in the present pandemic), let’s move to the silver lining.

One of the eeriest memories I have from 9/11 is the empty skies. I looked up and it was nothing but God’s blue. No silver specks slowly moving across the celestial vault. No contrails stitching sky. No distant drones of airplane engines.

These past few weeks, I’ve noticed something similar but much less eerie. I go out on long walks and our street, typically semi-busy, is all but empty. Completely empty, if you go out between 6 and 8 a.m.

The dog and I walk the middle of the road like it’s a wide pedestrian path. Instead of the sound of tires on tar, the sounds of nature are magnified. The cardinals, nuthatches, and flickers. The chickadees. Ducks from the pond. A red squirrel chittering. Spring peepers from the bog.

The lack of competition from man-made sound has gifted us with the sounds of nature our forebears once enjoyed, sounds with no competition from human invention. The quiet, even interrupted by the tapping of a Pileated Woodpecker, seems so…gentle. And lovely, too.

Maybe it’s not much, but in awful times like these, we have to reach for “not much” and cherish it. Humans hunkered down means nature unleashed, as if our surroundings have, overnight, become game preserves and nature conservancies, all magnified by the rites of spring.

That’s right. Spring. A budding branch of normalcy populated with “life is as it should be” actors who go about their usual rituals.

Take it, I say. It’s good for the soul and nourishes the body. Silver linings like that shouldn’t be passed up.

Philosophy Needs Metaphor Like Cookies Need Milk

philosophy poetry reading poetry

They say we stand apart from animals on one count and one count alone: we think metaphorically. What’s more, if you want to show off by thinking philosophically, metaphor is surely your friend.

This knowledge, paired with something that you as a writer hold deep knowledge of, is literary gold. Philosophically speaking (like Plato or Aristotle might if you gave them another chance), what is your pastime, passion, or skill like?

If you were to hew a poem from such a question, it would require descriptive and narrative skills (important stuff only, please) as well as the gift of comparing two unlike things that readers would agree are alike in some way, after all. Do it well and even the lion might crown you king of the beasts!

Wondering what this might look like? Today’s poem, by Jeffrey Harrison, gives us both a pastime (fly fishing) and a cliché (the same river twice) in order to create metaphor.

Could you do the same for something you love to do, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Philosopher Slash Poet or Short Story Writer or Essayist? Rhetorical question, of course.

The Same River
Jeffrey Harrison

Yes, yes, you can’t step into the same
river twice, but all the same, this river
is one of the things that has changed
least in my life, and stepping into it
always feels like returning to something
far back and familiar, its steady current
of coppery water flowing around my calves
and then my thighs, my only waders
a pair of old shorts. Holding a fly rod
above my head, my other arm out
for balance, like some kind of dance,
trying not to slip on the mossy rocks,
I make my way out to the big rock
I want to fish from, mottled with lichen
that has dried to rusty orange, a small
midstream island that a philosopher
might use to represent stasis
versus flux, being amidst becoming,
in some argument that is larger
than any that interests me now
as I climb out dripping onto the boulder
and cast my line out to where the bubbles
form a channel and trail off in a V
that points to where the fish might be,
holding steady amid the river’s flow.

Getting Mad as Hell and Not Taking It Anymore

blathering comma mine opinion poetry

cut

One weird development (of many, trust me) in this Year of Living Virally is what people are doing with extra time at home.

Yes, you’ve read a lot about people Netflixing but not chillin’. Eating. Taking up a hobby. Eating. Painting a room and ceiling. Eating. Reading War and for the hell of it, Peace. Eating. Getting in touch with one’s “Who’s a Nerd Now?” spirit and riding one’s overpriced Peloton bike. Eating. Baking, and even though it hasn’t gone in the oven yet and there’s egg in the dough, eating.

But I’m talking about getting mad as hell about something that’s disappearing like sand through our fingers: money.

Let’s start with the elephant on your television: cable TV. These clowns pretend to offer savings via “bundles” (as in “bundles” of money into their coffers and out of your wallet), but they take home some $180 a month or, in many cases, more.

And for what? Hundreds of channels, of which you watch, maybe, eight. Oh. And there remain dozens of channels STILL that cost EVEN MORE because you have to pony up more lucre comma filthy if you want to see them.

But the big driver in the piggish profits of cable companies is sports. Pity the non-sports fan paying for cable. All that money to watch a sappy Christmas Hallmark movie in April (recently ruled “cruel and unusual punishment” by the World Court at the Hague).

Major league sports, with their major league player salaries and their major league millionaire / billionaire owner profits cost a lot of money to broadcast. They are Culprit #1 behind bloated prices in the cable industry.

But what about now, with no live sports to speak of being televised and none scheduled for a very long time (unless you want to watch close-ups of Covid-19 viral proteins jousting with the armies of people’s immune systems)? Has cable television responded to the complete absence of sports by lowering your monthly bills?

That would be a “no,” as in big-time “no,” as in “it is to laugh” no.

I remember years back when a landscaping company sent notices to all of its customers saying it was raising prices on lawn-cutting jobs by $10 because of a horrific spike in the cost of gasoline.

Guess what happened months later when the gas prices went back down? You got it. Nothing. Telling us that, in this country, what goes up does *not* necessarily come down.

So, yes. Some of you sheltered-in folks have smartened up, become mad as hell, and called your cable company to tell them they can take their bloated cable box and…

Oh, wait. This is a family blog. Let us draw the curtains of courtesy over the remainder of that line and start streaming stuff on our TVs with something cheaper and a little less greedy and sports-driven.

Moral of the Post: Now that we’ve lost our jobs and the social fabric as we once knew it, it’s high time we think about ways to save ourselves a little money, starting with the most bloated offender in the house, cable television.

Cut the cord, then celebrate your savings by having something to eat.

cord cutting

Everything’s Gone Viral (And Other Sad Thoughts)

blathering comma mine humor opinion poetry random thoughts

seuss

It’s been a while since I did a “Random Thoughts” post. On this gloomy, rainy, viral Friday, maybe it’s time to open the stream of consciousness anew…

Looking at rain drops wobbling down the window glass always reminds me of Dr. Seuss’s book The Cat in the Hat, which I read frequently as a kid.
In fact, I often refer to rainy days as “Cat in the Hat Days.”
I feel like saying this is Day #___ of the coronavirus slash Covid-19 hunkering-down slash shelter-in-place slash lockdown crisis, but really, who knows where this really “began”?
I’ve a friend who has started a pool on when it “ends,” but again, this means we need to make like Webster and define “ends.”
Supposedly the virus has brought on a resurgence in reading.
And family sniping.
And eating.
A lot (thus the toilet paper shortage).
Helpful Hint: Food for Thought (packaged in books) brings zero calories. Compare to the nutrition panel on the side of ice cream half gallons.
Oh, wait. They don’t make half gallons anymore. Whatever smaller size it is, then. Packaging shrinks. Prices rise. To the tune of “America the Beautiful (Corporatocracy).”
It’s times like these that bring us together as a world. If the virus has no use for nationality, religion, race, or class differences, why should we? We’re all in this fight together, and hopefully, when it ends, we won’t forget its lessons.
Main lesson: People everywhere just want to be happy, to love their families, to live in peace. They have little use for leaders (of their country or others) who have other ideas, ones that have to do with power, war, and corruption.
April is National Poetry Month. Can you feel the joy? I received my final issue of Poetry, the magazine, this week. I let the subscription lapse because I wasn’t feeling a lot of joy over the editorial selections there.
That said, the April issue does include a new Ocean Vuong poem.
Which includes a stanza that reads: “Once, at a party set on a rooftop in Brooklyn for an “artsy vibe,” a young / woman said, sipping her drink, You’re so lucky. You’re gay plus you get to / write about war and stuff. I’m just white. [Pause.] I got nothing. [Laughter, / glasses clinking.]”
Sic semper artsy young white woman writers from Brooklyn. Vuong can be both funny and edgy.
Speaking of poetry, have you ever noticed, should you happen to get two acceptances in a row from poetry markets, that you feel invincible, like you’ve finally been “discovered”?
“Fool me once…”
Or how about those contests you occasionally enter. When you still haven’t heard back and the “decide by” date is but two days away, you conjure a big, shiny conference table surrounded by editors discussing the three finalists, one of which is your baby.
“Fool me twice…”
It’s hard being creative and flattening curves at the same time. (See previous reference to ice cream.)
On rainy days like today, I get my exercise by walking up and down the stairs for 20 minutes.
Helpful Hint: It goes much faster to music you like. Your brain focuses more on the rhythm and beat and less on the dog at the foot of the stairs staring at you like you’re some plain fool.
Easter approaches and, for many of us, we will be hamming it up alone with our spouses (pass the horseradish). Nearby family might as well be far away family when each person you used to hug and kiss is the sum of every person he or she has met in the past 14 days.
Man, do I hate doing math like that. Welcome to 2020, the Year of Living Dangerously.
With the libraries out of business, I’ve been scouring my shelves for books I own but haven’t read. A New York Times article on books to read during the Coronavirus Captivity recommended Goncharov’s Oblomov, a book I actually own. “Huzzah!” I said (because I so seldom get a chance to say, “Huzzah!”)
The excitement didn’t last, however. The book I am presently reading: Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters, includes a screed where Chekhov tells a friend that, after rereading Oblomov, he found it entirely lacking.
Even dead men can take the wind out of your sails.
Poor Chekhov. I cringe every time he coughs up blood and tells his brothers or sister not to tell Mama or Papa!
As I sip my morning sanity: Thank God there have been no coffee bean shortages.
(Shhh! Don’t give anyone ideas.)
Stay safe, be productive, and be kind.

A Poem About Poets? Must Be April.

poetry reading poetry

hofmann

April is poetry month. Calloo! Callay! (As they used to say.)

To celebrate, the august and top-paying poetry journal, Poetry, penciled in Michael Hofmann as its lead-off batter in their April 2020 edition. The poem? “Famous Poets.”

Until the last stanza, the poets are plural and the pronouns “he” and “she” are used. But, in the end, the poem finishes with the line “On his way somewhere,” leading one to believe it might be about a particular famous poet (as if there were many to choose from).

I would say the tone is humorous throughout, with a more serious undercurrent, but then, what do I know, being a poet five times removed from his distant cousin in Kazakhstan, fame.

I’ll say this. The poem dares to use the word “plethora,” a word famous for being avoided. Cheers for that. And Hofmann himself, though he apparently has written five collections of poetry, is not famous. Or at least not famous enough for me to know. (Consider the source, however, as the only famous living poet I know is St. Billy of Collins.)

Note, too, how the final stanza swings its elbows more with the opinions, as if Hofmann’s alter ego took over for the finish with a flourish. Previous to that, it’s almost avuncular in its approach, as if Hofmann knows the ropes and is gently amused. In the end, though? Less so.

I’m not sure I appreciate it as much as I would if I were a veteran warrior of the poetry circuits. I’m not. Me, I’ve only had minor experience with poets and learned a few hard lessons about a few personalities, all decidedly not famous but all willing to dream the dream and express their opinions as if they were.

How about you? Are you famous enough to understand all the allusions Hofmann offers? Give it a go and let me know!

Famous Poets
Michael Hofmann

Privileged inhabitants of a biotope of vouchers,
disbursements and residencies; miracles of state support
and a surprising plethora of who-knew international systems;
experts at putting the bite on the hand.

Languishing behind iconic early photographs
of themselves in camps, at borders, over war zones,
canvassing the trouble spots;
no longer to be met with at home, wherever that was.

Un peu partout, then (means: angry everywhere).
Their one vein is praise, though only
of the austerely praiseworthy. Bread. Tea. Salt.
Their second: speechless indignation, yards of it.

They put the bien in pensant. Papabile in age (though see also: mamabile).
The love life makes an agreeable pasture.
The personal is/is not political.
Faithful bonds, or, conversely, his/her sterling appetites.

But orthodox stuff. Mother and father position.
Comfortingly behind the times. The men strong, silent,
oh-so-performing, the women granted/claiming all of two modes:
the abject pine and the wowingly satisfied.

Poems that, because anyone might have written them,
appeal to everyone. That resist the understanding not at all,
that barely engage it. Atlanta airport. A vision of Yevtushenko
in yellow. A loud suit. On his way somewhere.

"Famous Poets" Michael Hofmann

The Anti-Hero’s Journey: Poets Can Play, Too

poetry reading poetry

Many novels follow a circular pattern, much like the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell made famous. But what of the anti-hero’s journey? Or a world with journeys that lack any heroes? Can they start in one place, go out on their fraught arcs, and return, too, changed irrevocably?

The questions come to mind when reading Carolyn Forché’s poem “Selective Service.” It starts with the most innocent of images: the snow angel. It ends with angels, too. But in 26 lines, the definition of angelic bends a bit.

Writing a circular poem like this means that the beginning and end — similar, yet not — are only half the battle. It’s what comes between that matters.

Selective Service
Carolyn Forché

We rise from the snow where we’ve
lain on our backs and flown like children,
from the imprint of perfect wings and cold gowns,
and we stagger together wine-breathed into town
where our people are building
their armies again, short years after
body bags, after burnings. There is a man
I’ve come to love after thirty, and we have
our rituals of coffee, of airports, regret.
After love we smoke and sleep
with magazines, two shot glasses
and the black and white collapse of hours.
In what time do we live that it is too late
to have children? In what place
that we consider the various ways to leave?
There is no list long enough
for a selective service card shriveling
under a match, the prison that comes of it,
a flag in the wind eaten from its pole
and boys sent back in trash bags.
We’ll tell you. You were at that time
learning fractions. We’ll tell you
about fractions. Half of us are dead or quiet
or lost. Let them speak for themselves.
We lie down in the fields and leave behind
the corpses of angels.

And so the traditional, circular arc is as viable an option for poets as it is for novelists. Here Forché shows just how effective it can be.

Have a before and after, happily ever or not? Think about putting it to pen. You might even start in the middle and work your way forward and backward.

The Sweet Seduction of Narrative Poetry

poetry reading poetry

Humans are hardwired for story, all right. Suckers for it. Can’t resist it.

Got a good tale to tell? Ready with just the right amount of detail, cutting all the rest? Then poetry is waiting, open arms, just like any other genre.

Don’t believe me? Check out Walter McDonald’s narrative poem below. You find yourself believing in these two men in a matter of five lines, identifying with what they’re both about and up to, giving yourself up to the inevitable turn at the end because you have to get there to see what happens.

What If I Didn’t Die Outside Saigon
Walter McDonald

So what do you want? he growled inside the chopper,
strapping me roughly to the stretcher
as if I were already dead. “Jesus,” I swore,
delirious with pain, touching the hot mush of my legs.
“To see my wife. Go home, play with my kids,

help them grow up. You know.” His camouflaged face
was granite, a colonel or sergeant who’d seen it all.
He wore a parka in the rain, a stubby stale cigar
bit tight between his teeth, a nicked machete
like a scythe strapped to his back. He raised a fist

and held the chopper. He wore a gold wrist watch
with a bold sweep-second hand. The pilot glanced back,
stared, and looked away. Bored, the old man asked,
Then what? his cigar bobbing. I swallowed morphine
and choked, “More time. To think, plant trees,

teach my kids to fish and catch a ball.”
Yeah? he said, sucking the cigar, thinner
than he seemed at first. Through a torrent of rain,
I saw the jungle closing over me like night.
“And travel,” I said, desperate, “to see the world.

That’s it, safe trips with loved ones. Long years
to do whatever. Make something of my life. Make love,
not war.” I couldn’t believe it, wisecracking clichés,
about to die. He didn’t smile, but nodded. So?
What then? “What then? Listen, that’s enough,

isn’t that enough?” His cigar puffed
into flame, he sucked and blew four perfect rings
which floated through the door and suddenly
dissolved. Without a word, he leaned and touched
my bloody stumps, unbuckled the stretcher straps

and tore the Killed-in-Action tag from my chest.
And I sat up today in bed, stiff-legged, out of breath,
an old man with a room of pictures of children
who’ve moved away, and a woman a little like my wife
but twice her age, still sleeping in my bed.

The abstract dreams of the injured man and the reality of descriptions and dialogue inside the chopper dance nicely together. And man, that final stanza, that “tore the Killed-in-Action tag from my chest.” Those final four lines of realization contrasting dream life from real life, “what if” life from “actually happened” life.

Makes you glad you’re hardwired for story, doesn’t it? Makes you realize you have stories to share, too, and this isn’t a bad model to emulate.

Not bad at all.

Loss of Libraries: A Hole in Our Social Fabric

blathering comma mine poetry

The Year of Living Dangerously, a. k. a. 2020, will be remembered as a year of many losses, greatest of which is human life. There will be many small losses to account for, too, including human interaction, jobs, and in some cases, sanity.

Less noticed on the list of these losses is the shuttering of public libraries. It’s only been a few weeks, but already I begin to notice this hole in the social fabric. Admittedly, some people don’t even use their town libraries or the inter-library loan program. Hell, some people don’t even read. But then there’s the rest of us. The ones who consume two kinds of food—that on our plates and that between covers.

When the libraries shut, we were all frozen in time, left with the books we happened to have checked out when towns and cities called the whole thing off. In my case, it is only four books, now all finished.

If only I had a Nostradamus inkling that this was coming! I would have checked out a couple dozen, as there is no limit. Instead, I have these four with their due dates on perpetual hold. And one inter-library request that still reads “In Transit,” even though it is no more transiting than Plymouth Rock.

If you are a library fan like me, it is probably for the same reasons. Purchasing books to feed your reading habit is a fast lane to the poor farm, and money wasn’t exactly flowing before our time of troubles, never mind during them.

Without the library, then, we are forced to turn to our own bookshelves. Isn’t it odd how they are populated with books we always said we would read but didn’t? In some cases, these are books we purchased, maybe with a birthday or Christmas gift card, thinking we couldn’t wait, and then could.

Scouring my own shelves, I see a few examples. Chief among them is Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov. I’ve had it so long, I can’t even tell you why I bought it. Yet there it sits, as apparently the main character likes to do. Perhaps these cabin days are perfect for Oblomov’s temperament. Perhaps it’s time to pick up this still-pristine copy of Goncharov’s classic and dive in.

Then there’s the door-stopping biography Grant by Ron Chernow. I read and enjoyed Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton. I love reading about the Civil War. So I purchased it, sure that I would be getting to it sooner rather than later.

And yet…. And yet…. Once it arrived, I felt little inclination to pick it up, favoring instead shorter books or books of the moment, the kind that constantly catch my fancy.

I have a beautiful clothbound copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, which I actually started to read once upon a year. The bookmark still sits around 1/3rd of the way in. Bookmarks are patient things, ready and willing for readers who are once again ready and willing. Now there’s an option, I’m telling myself. Good old Jean Valjean.

Then there are the collections. At one time, in the early days of its inception, the Library of America started to sell hardcover copies of American classics. I purchased around 30 books by subscription before bailing due to mounting costs. Do you know how many of those books have gone untouched? They’re pretty to look at, with spines colorful as confetti, yet they gather a Library of American Dust.

I have a complete set of Mark Twain books, too, and though I have read many of these (admirably enough), I have not read just as many. Any of those would be ready and willing, should I step up. I need only step up!

Yessiree, Bob. These are the times that try men’s reading souls. These are also the times where readers have to look within, and in this case, “within” means our own bookshelves where all of us keep, free of board, some unread orphans.

How about you? What’s on your unread bookshelf?

Whither the Public Park?

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Remember public parks? You entered them with only one thought in mind: enjoying the fresh air, the greenery, the pond, maybe, with some ducks, swans, and geese.

Today, even public parks have become fraught. Some, in the interest of “social distancing,” are being closed like our beaches. Others are still open, but decidedly not with the same vibe.

Yesterday my wife and I visited a park with trails that ran through fields, woods, and salt marshes. One trail led to the sea, where the Atlantic was in high dudgeon, crashing beautifully against the shore.

Coming back on a narrow stretch of trail through the woods, we came across another couple coming the other way. The woman reacted oddly. She stepped off the path into the wood, despite the fact that the grounds were soaked and her sneakers were getting wet. She turned her back to us as we passed around four feet away (we could do no better).

It took all of two seconds to pass, and yet her reaction was almost medieval, as if we were misunderstood lepers or something. Welcome to the new world of coronavirus, where something as ordinary as public parks, like everything else, are suddenly transformed and other-worldly.

And while some might consider it overreaction, her behavior at least deserves respect on multiple fronts: She’s doing the right thing for the community, what she’s been asked to do, what science recommends that we do until we get through this. It’s odd, but it’s where we’re at now.

So let’s get nostalgic, shall we, and look at Wendy Mnookin’s poem, “The Public Garden.” By line 3 in stanza one, you know it is Boston (“swan boats”), a place I’ve been more than once. And yet, reading it deep in March of 2020, it all appears rather strange.

The Public Garden
Wendy Mnookin

The sun is shining and I’m content
to be myself, walking across the Common
as families queue up by the Swan Boats,

real swans parting the water
in elegant wakes. This is
la vie en rose—

on a lawn vivid with spring
people walk their dogs, peeling off
in clusters of introduction and gossip;

below a sign that shouts Don’t
Feed the Ducks, families throw
wadded-up bread into the pond;

kids on the carousel want
More! More! Frisbee players,
tourists in Red Sox caps, babies

with their dimpled elbows,
the guy on stilts, the pretzel vendor,
the woman holding out a cup for change

as she recites our forecast,
I’m taking it in, all of it, sun
and melting cones, skinned knees

and soothing words
and single shining tears,
whatever love has rained on us all.

Weird how the times can make lines read differently. For instance, “peeling off / in clusters of introduction and gossip;” That’s history.

And the civil disobedience bit rings a bit more true and a bit more foreboding: “below a sign that shouts Don’t / Feed the Ducks, families throw / wadded-up bread into the pond”.

Because the reality is this: For every woman who turns her back to you and huddles hard against a forest to protect herself from possible “community transmission,” there are 50 people who are flouting the rules, who think this is all of a joke, who are—as much as possible—proceeding with life as usual, to the detriment of all. My rights over your rights, in other words. People who are a community of one.

Yep. These are strange times, all right. And, in some cases, it means you read poems through a glass darkly, seeing them in new and unexpected ways. A public garden, for instance, as bit of unanticipated nostalgia.

Context, it’s called. And the inevitable melting cones and skinned knees of history that only was yesterday.

"The Public Garden" Wendy Mnookin

Aphorisms to Live By

poetry

glc

Holed up in a cabin that looks suspiciously like your house? Ready to “waste” some time wisely? Consider the sanity we call aphorisms, plenty of which can be found in Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s The Waste Books.

The word “waste” comes not from garbage, as you might suspect, but from the business practice of jotting down transactions in real time, only to organize them later in a more formal ledger. Thus, any ideas that came into Lichtenberg’s constantly buzzing head would land in his “waste” book, which is anything but and, in truth, shows some polished, ledger-like thought.

The version I read comes from nyrb’s estimable paperback series (an addiction that could prove costly, so readers beware). Some of my favorite GCL thoughts are as follows:

- “Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato’s dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.” This resonates with me because I’ve found that, often in life, playing the role of anti-anything amounts to the same hubris as the opposed sentiment to begin with. For instance, to be overly vocal in your disdain for the wealthy and their laughable pride in materialism is, in itself, a sort of “materialism” — the riches of “anti-materialism,” or the pride in ostentatious poverty, if you will. Look at me, at how I wear my pride in despising the laughable pride of others. As Plato might say, it’s all one, and thus do opposites recognize parts of themselves in each other.
- “Every observer of human nature knows how hard it is to narrate experiences in such a way that no opinion or judgment interferes with the narration.” Is there such a thing as complete objectivity? I think not, and this aphorism speaks to that.
- “A principal rule for writers, and especially those who want to describe their own sensations, is not to believe that their doing so indicates they possess a special disposition of nature in this respect. Others can perhaps do it just as well as you can. Only they do not make a business of it, because it seems to them silly to publicize such things.” Here we have Lichtenberg anticipating blogs (I write, therefore I am somebody). And yet, Lichtenberg is guilty himself — knowingly so and with a wink. As for my blog, if you read it, please assume the winking behind its “specialness.”
- “Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.” Mark Twain often sneered at “the damned human race” and held up animals as the superior breed. Maybe it’s that abject “nobility,” a near neighbor of “pride,” that manifests itself in our ideas about our bodies, our modesty, our high sense of decorum — this despite the fact that our bodies are, in one sense, no different than the bodies of animals (who really don’t obsess about the covering of their mortal coils the way we do). That said, I am most grateful that most people do cover their coils. “Mortality” is the least of these coils’ problems.
- “We are only too inclined to believe that if we possess a little talent work must come easily to us. You must exert yourself, man, if you want to do something great.” We are only too fond of short cuts and of letting ourselves off the hook by way of excuses. One of our favorites: I can’t do that or do that as well because I lack the talent that x has.
- “You can take the first book you lay your hands on and with your eyes closed point to any line and say: A book could be written about this. When you open your eyes, you will seldom find you are deceived.” Who needs prompts? Just take Lichtenberg’s advice. And yet, despite this, there is nothing new under the sun. The wisdom of Lichtenberg meets the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Amazing.
- “The individual often praises what is bad, but the whole human race praises only the good.” What I most admire about Lichtenberg is his affinity for irony.
- “That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.” See what I mean?
- “It requires no especially great talent to write in such a way that another will be very hard put to it to understand what you have written.” This aphorism should be posted above the desk of every poet — and every poetry journal editor.
- “We have the often thoughtless respect accorded ancient laws, ancient usages and ancient religion to thank for all the evil in the world.” One need only read the front section of the newspaper to reveal the wisdom in this thought.
- “It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all. Most people have no ideas, says Dr. Price, they talk about a thing but they don’t think: this is what I have several times called having an opinion.” And this should be posted above the entrance to the U.S. Capitol — a Congress of no ideas, of talking about things without thinking. Or, simply tune to Fox News, a lair of heated and often dangerous to breathe air.
- “It is very much in the order of nature that toothless animals should have horns: is it any wonder that old men and women should often have them?” File under the category, “Older and bolder.”
- “From love of fatherland they write stuff that gets our dear fatherland laughed at.” Another thought for our posturing, prattling politicians. Or ugly Americans wherever you may find them.
- “I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others, too.” Consider him or her you call friend. Reconsider the source of your admiration. Is it a facet of you yourself you’re admiring? And, when your friend disappoints you, is it because you yourself have surfaced in your friend?
- “Wine is accredited only with the misdeeds it induces: what is forgotten is the hundreds of good deeds of which it is also the cause. Wine excites to action: to good actions in the good, to bad in the bad.” Hmn… I wonder if Lichtenberg was an oenophile? And if he considered himself “good”? A toast to correct answers!
- “The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.” I am a big (little?) fan of “little things” and believe that they are difference makers in writing, in cooking, in working, in most anything you care to bring up. Together, the little things move valleys.

“He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.” Cautionary words not only for keepers of waste books, but writers of blogs! Are we that enamored of our own thoughts and words that we think others visit (much less return) to read them? Stats on WordPress are a quick cure for that delusion (and reaffirmation of Lichtenberg’s words).
“What am I? What shall I do? What can I believe and hope for? Everything in philosophy can be reduced to this…” It’s hard to get past the first question, much less face dragons #2 and 3! I’m on the stretch drive of life and still haven’t solved for x in the equation x = me.
“Writing is an excellent means of awakening in every man the system slumbering within him; and everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before.” If Lichtenberg’s words can be used to mock blogging, so can they be used to tout it. Behold! I write, therefore I am!
“The Catholics once burned the Jews and failed to reflect that the mother of God was of that nation, and even now do not reflect that they worship a Jewess.” Lichtenberg was fascinated by matters of religion and counted himself an enlightened doubter. Given his druthers between Catholics and Protestants, however, he does his fellow Germans proud. Luther would applaud.
“Use, use your powers: what now costs you effort will in the end become mechanical.” If I could teach students of life one aphorism to live by, this would be it. It does get easier! But first, discipline and a work ethic.
“To me there is no more odious kind of person than those who on every occasion believe they are obliged to be ex officio witty.” Ah, the office wag… the class clown… the drunk wearing the lampshade. God love ’em (because no one else can).
“You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.” People hear what they want to hear, and they seldom want to hear the truth. Speculation and conspiracy theories, on the other hand? There’s no end to the hunger. See: Fox News and The White House.
“The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.” Is this another way of saying “talk is cheap”? Or maybe, “action speaks louder than words”? Thus do cliches become novel aphorisms.
“He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery…” One admirable trait of Lichtenberg is his ability to criticize even himself. Clearly he has proven his own theory: We are all susceptible to some kinds of flattery, try as we might to remain “pure.”
“Is it not strange that men are so keen to fight for religion and so unkeen to live according to its precepts?” At times, irony proves its point more readily than speeches and treatises.