Uh-oh, here it comes again

Laughing Gravy

The crisis has just passed.
Uh-oh, here it comes again,
looking for someone to blame itself on, you, I . . .

All these people coming in . . .
The last time we necked
I noticed this lobe on your ear.
Please, tell me we may begin.

All the wolves in the wolf factory paused
at noon, for a moment of silence.

Magne's Aphorisms

Big Frank is a big fan of the aphorism: small bits of insight delivered in a pleasing way. Accent on the short. His good friend Magne is a master of the form and Big Frank is waiting for him to publish some of the thousands of aphorisms that he has written (3,174 and counting). Here is a sampling of some that Big Frank likes.

The aphorism is where the poet and the thinker meet to pass a secret message.

We walk among strangers as among ghosts.

It is hard to admit your feelings, but harder still to admit the trivial things that engender them.What makes us think that love is the answer? Our heart.

I don't need to be loved for who I am. I need to be loved in spite of who I am.

You must occasionally allow people to be tired and sick of you so they can love you again.

The greatest aphrodisiac is love

Sex is driving around enjoying the ride. Love is traveling — often to a place you have never been before.

A person can get killed trusting someone, but a person will die if they do not.

Happiness does not only come from doing what you want to do, happiness also comes from doing what you should be doing.

The price of happiness — is unhappiness.

I constantly construct a narrative for my feelings.

It is hard to admit your feelings, but harder still to admit the trivial things that engender them.

Our desire for things gets in the way of our understanding of things.

Truant exchanges ... brandished intentions

[Photo: Big Frank Dickinson, taken at North Bend, WA]

A beautiful poem by John Ashbery that will stay with you for some time afterwards.

Wakefulness

An immodest little white wine, some scattered seraphs,
recollections of the Fall—tell me,
has anyone made a spongier representation, chased
fewer demons out of the parking lot
where we all held hands?

Little by little the idea of the true way returned to me.
I was touched by your care,
reduced to fawning excuses.
Everything was spotless in the little house of our desire,
the clock ticked on and on, happy about
being apprenticed to eternity. A gavotte of dust motes
came to replace my seeing. Everything was as though
it had happened long ago
in ancient peach-colored funny papers
wherein the law of true opposites was ordained
casually. Then the book opened by itself
and read to us: “You pack of liars,
of course tempted by the crossroads, but I like each
and every one of you with a peculiar sapphire intensity.
Look, here is where I failed at first.
The client leaves. History natters on,
rolling distractedly on these shores. Each day, dawn
condenses like a very large star, bakes no bread,
shoes the faithless. How convenient if it’s a dream.”

In the next sleep car was madness.
An urgent languor installed itself
as far as the cabbage-hemmed horizons. And if I put a little
bit of myself in this time, stoppered the liquor that is our selves’
truant exchanges, brandished my intentions
for once? But only I get
something out of this memory.
A kindly gnome
of fear perched on my dashboard once, but we had all
been instructed
to ignore the conditions of the chase. Here, it
seems to grow lighter with each passing century. No matter
how you twist it,
life stays frozen in the headlights.
Funny, none of us heard the roar

TNT Mate

Big Frank has been reading from Jay Leeming's book of poetry entitled "Dynamite on a China Plate. The following helps a bit in approaching this book.

Dynamite (TNT): a useful explosive material with convenient handling properties. People exposed to TNT over a prolonged period tend to experience anemia and abnormal liver functions along with toxic delusions.

China Plate: London Cockney rhyming slang, china plate = mate.


Rowboat

An oar is a paddle with a home. This arrangement seems awkward at first, as if it were wrong; the wood knocks in the oarlock, and would much rather be a church steeple, or the propeller of an old airplane in France. Yet as it bites deep into the wave it settles down, deciding that the axe and the carpenter were right. And you, too, are supposed to be sitting this way, back turned to what you want, watching your history unravel across the waves as your legs brush against the gunnels. Your feet are restless, wanting to be more involved. But your back is what gets you there, closer to what finally surprises you from behind: waves lapping at the shore, the soft nuzzle of sand.

APPLE

Sometimes when eating an apple
I bite too far
and open up the little room
the lovers have prepared,
and the seeds fall
onto the kitchen floor
and I see
that they are tear-shaped.

People don't change ...

One more lap might just do it ... ha!

Maximus, to Gloucester: Letter 2
By Charles Olson

. . . . . tell you? ha! who
can tell another how
to manage the swimming?

he was right: people

don’t change. They only stand more
revealed. I,
likewise

Gina's Back (with blisters)

Big Frank was out on the trail yesterday with Gina and Laura. Gina is back for a break from college. We took a short hike in the Spokane area. It was fun, but Gina started getting blisters and so had to finish the hike in her socks, but she finished it.

Blake and Watts

Big Frank was listening to an audio tape of Alan Watts talking about Zen. Watts in his explanation of Zen makes an interesting statement about following through on what you know, and the wisdom that can come in this way. He ends with a quotation from William Blake: “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Here are some more in this line from Blake:

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom;

Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plow.

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

Improvement makes strait roads;
but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.

You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.

Here is Alan Watts: from “Spirituality and Sensuality”

Not to cherish both the angel and the animal, both the spirit and the flesh, is to renounce the whole interest and greatness of being human, and it is really tragic that those in whom the two natures are equally strong should be made to feel in conflict with themselves. For the saint-sinner and the mystic-sensualist is always the most interesting type of human being because he is the most complete. When the two aspects are seen to be consistent with each other, there is a real sense in which spirit transforms nature: that is to say, the animality of the mystic is always richer, more refined, and more subtly sensuous than the animality of the merely animal man.

The Happiness Hypothesis

[Photo: Big Frank Dickinson]

Big Frank is reading (again) Jonathan Haidt’s great book, "The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt takes as his central metaphor for humans an small lawyer riding on top of an elephant. The elephant is the sum total of all of our unconscious urges, desires, thoughts, and feelings. The lawyer then creates explanations for what the elephant does. It has little to do whatsoever with the truth, but it creates the illusion of understanding. The book then through references to a number of psychology experiments and stoic and eastern philosophy attempts to show how pervasive our unconscious is and how we better maintain happiness while riding this the wild beast that we inhabit. Here are a few quotations that Big Frank likes:

“man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun"

Sen-ts'an, an early Chinese Zen mater, urged nonjudgmentalism as a prerequisite to following 'the perfect way' in this poem from the eighth century:

The perfect Way is only difficult for
those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike; all will then
be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference, and
Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear
before you, for or against.
The struggle between ‘for’ and
'against' is the mind's worst disease.

"Buddhism and Stoicism teach that striving for external goods, or to make the world conform to your wishes, is always striving after wind. Happiness can only be found within by breaking attachments to external things and cultivating an attitude of acceptance."

Reason

Ben Franklin said concerning reason: "So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to."

Now, Big Frank, was thinking the hinge there in Franklin's quotation was what "one has a mind to". Reason is utilitarian, its job is to do your bidding. It starts early - just ask a kid why the sky is blue, or why water is wet, or any other question and they will give you an answer. Look out at a beautiful scene in nature and ask yourself why it is that you like it - you'll get an answer, but it probably has little to do with why you were asthetically pleased. Ask yourself why you are in love with someone (there is no reason for that - one loves whom one loves) and your reason will supply you with a laudry list of characteristics and traits - none of which, most likely have anything to do with your attraction.

There have been studies on this. People are asked difficult questions, like whether the minimum wage should be increased. Most people have an immediate preference, and then they call their reason lawyer to supply them with some support. Reasons doesn't decide it backs up the position or preference that the person alreay has. Where does that preference come from - who knows?