Thursday, January 18, 2024

In the world, many distasteful things are known to occur.

Throughout history, many delicate souls have been mastered.

Saturday, January 06, 2024

"Philosophy is disclosure of being, and being's essence is truth and philosophy. Being's essence is the temporalization of time, the diastasis of the identical and its recapture or reminiscence, the unity of apperception." (Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, II.2., p. 29)

Poetry wills the unleashing of becoming, and becoming's emergence wills justice and poetry. Becoming's emergence wills the spacialization of space, the confluence of difference and its forgiveness or forgetting, the multiplicity of agitation.

Friday, December 22, 2023

Everything in the world resists ending up in a book.
Writing is the texture of their resistance.

Saturday, December 02, 2023

Whenever I have an idea
reality puts me in my place.

Wherever it gets real,
ideally, I'll have a moment.

She believed in balance.

Whenever I found a way to make her life better,
she started looking for ways to destroy mine.

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Where are beings?
In becoming.
When do they come?
Eventually.

What is being?
It is what it is.
Who is coming?
You know who.

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Wednesday, November 08, 2023

Philosophy is about what must be true if anything is.

There's nothing like that to poetic justice.

Friday, October 27, 2023

Act, Fact, Artifact

People act; they do things. Facts are things done.

People get together to act. Things brought together are facts.

Things are just lying around. Facts accomplish them.

People make artifacts out of the things they find.

Monday, October 23, 2023

Monday, October 16, 2023

All facts are themselves. “Each item can be the case or not the case, while everything else remains the same.”

All acts are collective. A deed may be done by one of us, but is condoned or denounced by everyone else.

Saturday, October 07, 2023

"The pain is part of it," she said
and I laughed, because it is
a funny thing to say.
But now I know what she meant.
The sadness in her voice
is a memory, and my tears—
I tell you, the pain is part of it.

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Two Things Can Be True

Everyone deserves the love they get.
No one deserves the love they get.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

You can't solve the problem
of being
         by becoming
                  a man
            or a woman.

Just be yourself.
That's hard enough.

Monday, September 11, 2023

Wisdom is non-attachment; i.e.,
love is folly.

Friday, September 08, 2023

War Economy

Just before the first Gulf War in 1990, $5 was worth $11 in today's money. Compounded at 5%, you'd have about $22 today. But if you had invested it in Raytheon stock and sold on the day Putin invaded Ukraine you'd have $100 dollars.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Decency is the immediate rightness of conduct given one's desires, as honesty is the immediate rightness of conduct given one's beliefs.

Decency does not guarantee justice, nor does honesty guarantee truth. Indeed, the pursuit of truth sometimes requires dishonesty, and the pursuit of justice sometimes requires indecency.

Science is the pursuit of truth, constrained by honesty, not decency.

Politics is the pursuit of justice, constrained by decency, not honesty.

Art is a scandal.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

A conspiracy theorist is not someone who believes that a conspiracy took place. It is someone who thinks it is an empirical question whether it did.

Thursday, August 10, 2023

"May God forgive what you have done to me. I cannot."

This sentiment can be perfectly sincere. Indeed, two people who have hurt each other can each pray for the other's forgiveness without themselves being able to forgive.

Monday, August 07, 2023

Two paintings, two harbors,
four years and five hundred
nautical miles apart. Blues
that only eyes have seen.