It’s between a US Senator who served many terms and was involved in some major legislation (that bears his name) or a Nobel-winning Economist. So, no one that 99% of the planet has ever heard of. I will not comment on whether these individuals fell in the “famous” or “infamous” category.
If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?
Assuming no babel fish technology – i.e. that we’d need a common language – I’d say William Blake, Walt Whitman, or Mark Twain. The latter would probably be the most fun, the middle the most uplifting, and the first the most insightful (or perhaps most mystical.)
Wrath of the Dragon: The Real Fights of Bruce Lee by John Little
Are we Makers?
Yes. We are!
And damn good ones at that.
We can turn a planet
into plastic trinkets.
We can use every last morsel
to make stuff:
bright & shiny
or
loud & colorful.
We can even make ideas:
good or bad,
true or false,
but always 100% believable.
We're the ones who invented Evil.
Yes, that whole toxic notion
is brought to you by us.
And Left-Wing & Right-Wing...
It used to be just a bunch of people
trying their best to understand
and to get by.
But we built mental / conceptual corrals,
corrals good enough that we
could no longer recognize each other
as part of the same species.
We are Makers.
of all things for which
“just a little is enough:”
1.) human beings
People penned up without borders by some hidden social order wear uniform-less uniforms, and form a matrix, not a swarm. What invisible chains bind them? Where are the minders who mind them? Is compliance written in our genes -- remnant from ages of Kings and Queens?
The squirrel's life 's an acorn hunt: forage and hide the nut. But a feeble mind requires that it hide them by the glut. Squirrel happiness is fragile no cache is big enough to be certain it'll make it through should the winter get rough. Oh, give me the tardigrade life, not a doubt it'll survive. No food, no water, vacuum of space and the thing 's still [bleeping] alive. Rather than gathering plenty, I'd rather need much less, or, at least, not be so mindless to hoard in great excess.
There have been many poets and authors who — for various reasons — never attracted a fandom while alive, but who came to be considered among the greats of literature in death. Here are a few examples whose stories I find particularly intriguing.
by Thomas Phillips, oil on canvas, 1807
5.) William Blake: Blake sold fewer than 30 copies of his poetic masterpiece Songs of Innocence and Experience while alive. He was known to rub people the wrong way and didn’t fit in to society well. He was widely considered insane, but at a minimum he was not much for falling in with societal norms. (He probably was insane, but cutting against the grain of societal expectations has historically often been mistaken for insanity.) While he was a religious man (mystically inclined,) he’s also said to have been an early proponent of the free love movement. His views, which today might be called progressive, probably didn’t help him gain a following.
4.) Mikhail Bulgakov: Not only was Bulgakov’s brilliant novel, The Master & Margarita, banned during his lifetime, he had a number of his plays banned as well. What I found most intriguing about his story is that the ballsy author personally wrote Stalin and asked the dictator to allow him emigrate since the Soviet Union couldn’t find use for him as a writer. And he lived to tell about it (though he didn’t leave but did get a small job writing for a little theater.) Clearly, Stalin was a fan — even though the ruler wouldn’t let Bulgakov’s best work see the light of day.
3.) John Kennedy Toole: After accumulating rejections for his hilarious (and posthumously Pulitzer Prize-winning) novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, Toole committed suicide. After his death, Toole’s mother shopped the draft around and brow-beat Walker Percy into reading it, which ultimately resulted in it being published.
2.) Emily Dickinson: Fewer than 12 of Dickinson’s 1800+ poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson is the quintessential hermitic artist. Not only wasn’t she out publicizing her work, she didn’t particularly care to see those who came to visit her.
1.) Franz Kafka: Kafka left his unpublished novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, as well as other works in a trunk, and told his good friend Max Brod to burn it all. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your definition of a good friend), Brod ignored the instruction and the works were posthumously published.
In brief summary, here are the five ways to become a posthumous god of literature:
5.) Be seen as a lunatic / weirdo.
4.) Live under an authoritarian regime.
3.) Handle rejection poorly, lack patience, and / or fail to get help.
2.) Don’t go outside.
1.) Wink at the end of the sentence when you tell your best friend to burn all your work.
“I remember being born.”
“No. You don’t.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, let’s start from the assumption that you’re human…”
“I’d like to think so, but what are my options?”
“I don’t know. Humans don’t have that neural machinery at birth… So nothing from Earth remembers its birth.”
“And yet, I do.”
“Mightn’t you have cobbled together the scene from your mom’s stories, the family photo album, et cetera?”
“Nah! It’s too detailed. Feels too real.”
“I find your ignorance exhausting.”
“I find your certainty perplexing — not to mention irritating and slap-worthy.”
“Let’s agree to be mutually disenchanted.”
“Agreed.”
Taken in Ahmedabad in October of 2017
… Does it “pedaling-around-a-dozen-gas-canisters”-suck?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 