It is not that art is stronger than science. It's that science is only as strong as the arts that make it possible.

"There is the question: what relation must one fact (such as a sentence) have to another in order to be capable of being a symbol for that other? This is a logical question, and it is the one with which Mr. Wittgenstein is concerned." (Bertrand Russell)

There is another question: what relation must one fact (such as a body) have to another in order to be receptive to the symbolism of that other? This is a question of pathos, and it is one that Mallarmé, Williams, and Olson were very much conerned about.

There is a truth in loneliness
if you can endure it.

There are also communal truths;
school sustains them.

Literature: The loneliness that is the truth of things. (Virginia Woolf)

Scholarship: The truth that becomes a community, i.e., that people communicate to each other.

You'll Get Over It

Poetry makes you feel better.
It does not make you happy
when you are sad. It makes
your sadness more precise.

"A pure heart wants one thing." (Søren Kierkegaard)

Philosophy cannot change
how things are done.

No poem can fix
                    how people see.

The peculiar affectation of philosophers
that existence is a mystery.

The strange conceit of poets
that inspiration is an authority.

My perverse obsession
                                      with their likeness.

Do you want their praise?

People are mostly decent.
That's how institutions work.
We're honest about most things—
how we deal with intuitions.

Education is not a preparation for life.
It is a precision in our suffering.

The crime that you confess is not the actual crime.
The sins you are forgiven are not what you have done.

Incipit Vita Nova

She was "the blessed one," though few understood the meaning of her name. Blessed, too, was he to experience this woman, if only twice, some nine years apart, in his "old life," but perfectly.

God bless the troubadour, free spirit of romance, who teaches us to appreciate an inaccessible beauty, to value pleasures from which we are barred, by circumstance or disposition, and accept a deeper longing for the other, a firmer hold upon our ourselves, not merely as recompense for our suffering, but as the very revelation of our capacity to love.

Solace

I've been wrong about everything so far.
I may well be wrong about the rest.

Socratic Meditations

Rightness in the way of desire:
knowing what is good for you.
Rightness in the way of a belief:
mastering what is truly before you.

Know yourself and do what you will.
"Master thyself then others shall ye bear." (E.P.)

Knowledge is the learning that lasts.
Power is a freedom that grows.

See also: "Discipline and Freedom"

Children naturally resent being treated like children.
Why do adults demand it?

We're ever ready to accuse our politicians of corruption,
but reticent to suggest that our scientists are confused.

I once made a map
of all the bridges
I have burned. Then
I burned the map.

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Alt. take:

Let us make a map
of the all the bridges
we have burned. Then
let us burn the map.

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Alt. take:

I once made a map
of all the bridges
I have burned. Today
I burned the map.