Magne's Aphorisms

Big Frank went to the website of Smithmag.net to read some of the six-word memoirs. After all he did recommend the site. He read hundreds and hundreds of them and came away thinking that in fact these were all failed, well mostly failed, aphorisms. It turns out that when you ask the public to submit interesting and wise short sayings, call them what you will, that you will get mostly nonsense and cliches. Big Frank is not going to waste your time showing them to you. Instead, let's go to a master of the craft, Magne! Go to his blog at www.secretions.net (sorry the link isn't working just now) and read the pop quotes, or search by word. You will be entertained and enlightened. These are as good as they get (oops that's a cliche - sorry, Magne). Big Frank has grouped 20 he likes below (10 on love and 10 on life - the heart of the heart of the matter. That's Magne's photo in the top left corner. Big Frank snapped that at the Globe (a bar in Spokane, not the London theater!).

Love

Without fear I love because I frame people in love.
Occasionally people give you a look that says: I like you because you are a child of god. I prefer the look that says: I like you because you are not like the others.
No one needs to understand the love you have for other people, as much as you yourself do.
How can I be loved for things I don't love about myself?
I don't need to be loved for who I am. I need to be loved in spite of who I am.
The best mirror in the world is a beautiful woman who worships you.
Much of what we call love is actually partnering.
Sex is driving around enjoying the ride. Love is traveling — often to a place you have never been before.
What makes us think that love is the answer? Our heart.

Life
Life involves going into a box and staying there a lot.
There is never enough time to enjoy the moment.
We take our little solo. It lasts but a lifetime. (You're on.)
It is fantasy that floats our boats.
We have such high expectation of life. How can we know there's more to life than this?
You seldom have to walk the walk.
If life is a journey we spend a lot of time lost and sitting down.
It is not good to keep your options open forever.
It hardly takes a village, just a few friends and lovers.
Sometimes you need to disconnect the dots.

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.

Don Paterson aphorisms

Big Frank has been reading Don Paterson's book of aphorism's: Best Thought, Worst Thought. It is a wonderful collection and recommended to all of you who enjoy this short form, which Paterson sums up this way: "The aphorism is the rational articulation of a fleeing hysteria." Here are few more to enjoy:

In my adult life, the time I have actually lived inside the present moment would amount to no more than a single day. If only I could have lived it as a single day; it would have thrown its light into all the others, like a brazier in a dark arcade. Instead I find my way by sparks, and what they briefly made visible.

Always an error to make someone profess what they will not volunteer -- especially in love, where the spontaneity of its declaration is all the language ever holds of it.

The most erotic things that can be done to you are those that are driven by the purest selfishness on the part of your lover. Charity, on the other hand, is the great anaphrodisiac.

Desire is the inconvenience of its object. Lourdes isn't Lourdes if you live in Lourdes.

I was so practiced in disappointment, I absorbed the blow of her leaving me almost effortlessly. Allowing yourself to be constructed means you have been a different man from the start; I merely left his body behind like a husk, and let him take the punch. (I watched him double up as from above.) The loveless wraith of me was then free to wander, looking for my new instructions.

Consciousness can no more unmask its nature than the eye can see itself. It is contractually blind.

Late Night Aphorisms

When late night drops on Big Frank it brings a few thoughts, but they usually come in disparate clumps better suited to aphorisms than to any structured poems. Here are a few.

1. The object of your desire is your desire.
2. We can say that we agree to disagree, but why not we disagree to agree, we disagree to disagree or that we agree to agree?
3. Life is not a journey (that entails a known destination); it is mere wandering.
4. Wishes are to desire what sparks are to a fire.
5. Music plays to the emotions in ways that nobody understands - nobody.
6. Language carries our thoughts like a bucket with a hole in it.
7. You can't see there from there.

Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues

Big Frank has been reading aphorisms again (more from the king of aphorims - Magne). Here are a few of Big Franks's favorites from Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, 18th century soldier and author - sometimes called the modern stoic. Of his many gems Big Frank chooses these. Why these? Well, because these resonate - right now.

The head does not understand the aims of the heart.

Patience is the art of hoping.

It is the heart's function to, fix the order of our aims, and that of the reason to pursue them.

We do not suspect our feelings of misleading us.

Self-interest is the guiding principle of prudence.

Solitude tries chastity very hard.

Men's passions are so many open roads that lead nowhere.

We rarely speak or write what we think.

If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself, I reply: Because I have been wrong once, or oftener, I do not aspire to be always wrong

Love is stronger than love of self, since one can love a woman in spite of her disdain.