Knows when to mind their business and when to call the cops.
PROMPT: Neighbor
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Category Archives: Thoughts
PROMPT: Principles
What happens in the external world does not DETERMINE one’s mental / emotional experience.
It’s better to see oneself as a student than as a master — at any stage of life and development.
Be tolerant. No one knows enough to justify smug superiority.
Self-expression is what we live for, and it is curtailed to everyone’s detriment.
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Grave Reviews [Free Verse]
I click on Google Maps;
a pin highlights for a cemetery,
and, here, I stumble upon
graveyard reviews.
These reviews intrigue me because
it seems to me that if one is capable
of writing a cemetery review,
then one is unqualified.
And, if one is qualified to comment
on the caliber of an eternal resting place,
then one is unlikely to be capable of
posting a review.
I read one of the one-star reviews
and see that the reviewer's principal complaint
is an overabundance of "pocong."
"What is a 'Pocong?'" you may ask.
It is a Javanese ghost that takes up
occupancy in death shrouds.
Why is there a Javanese ghost
infestation in a cemetery 4000 kilometers
from Java, and -- as near as I can tell --
with zero Javanese occupants?
The review does not say,
but I love that someone panned
a cemetery based on the presence
of foreign ghosts
[and not because it is simultaneously
phasmophobic and xenophobic.]
But because it shows an unbridled commitment
to one's imagination that is usually
only seen among children.
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PROMPT: Changed Mind
Oh so many things. My epistemological stance is that one should be ready to drop any belief like a hot rock in the face of better information or better means to understanding.
One of the most fundamental changes is that I used to take for granted that there was a god. Now I’m agnostic about whether there is one, and am virtually certain that – in the unlikely event there is a god – it (she? they? he?) bears no resemblance to any of the tribally derived deities of the various world religions.
I used to think introversion was something that could be, and should be, overcome. Now, I believe the healthy approach is in accepting it and managing one’s life so that it’s not a problem. Truth be told, in my youth, I had a lot of grandiose ideas about what was possible with regards to the mind, ideas which I have jettisoned in favor of one’s that better match the empirical evidence.
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Masquerade [Lyric Poem]
Welcome to the masquerade!
It is your home from now on.
The you you were will soon fade
as you play out the long con.
Welcome to the masquerade!
Where all faces are untrue.
We are just the roles we've played,
not the selves we never knew.
Welcome to the masquerade!
Do you know just who I am?
I'm only what I've conveyed.
It's the "real me" that's a sham!
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Sole Connection [Free Verse]
The mountain
was so long ago.
Yet, I feel its pulse
throbbing under foot --
into my ever-loving sole.
[You thought I was going to say:
"everlasting soul," didn't you?
Do you think my soles
inconsequential in comparison
to my soul?]
Nothing is firmer or finer
than the point at which
I touch (& know) the earth,
than the point which
presses the real,
and, thus, by which I have
evidence that I live.
[The ghost feels nothing in its soles --
if such a being exists.]
These lowly old soles connect me
to all that is, was, and ever shall be.
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Five Wise Lines from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
All art is quite useless.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are fascinating.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
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Five Wise Lines from Epicurus
Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.
principal doctrines – No. 2
Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is too little.
Vatican Sayings – No. 68
Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
Principal Doctrines – No. 27
Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.
vatican sayings – No. 35
No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but some pleasures are only obtainable at the cost of excessive troubles.
Principal doctrines – No. 8
And Five Honorable Mentions:
[T]here are an infinite number of worlds, some like this world, others unlike it.
Letter to Herodotus
Dreams have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power, but they are the result of images that impact upon us.
vatican sayings – No. 24
It is pointless for a person to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
vatican sayings – No. 65
But one must not be so much in love with the explanation by a single way as wrongly to reject all others…
Letter to pythocles
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.
Letter to Menoeceus
SOURCE: Epicurus. 2021. The Fundamental Books of Epicurus: Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, and Letters. Trans. by: Robert Drew Hicks & R. Medeiros. Independently published on Amazon. 45pp.
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Waiting [Free Verse]
Waiting.
A space between.
Neither doing,
nor resting.
There's something in waiting
that lies beyond being.
An expectation without promise:
As with Vladimir & Estragon,
waiting on Beckett's Godot, or
the Old Man waiting
at Gao's Bus Stop,
There may not be a payoff.
Whatever it is in "waiting" that
distinguishes it from "being"
or "resting,"
it sucks!
All the excitement of expectation,
nullified by the possibility
that nothing will happen --
nothing good, nothing bad...
just a soul-sucking nothing.
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Five Wise Lines from Ben Franklin
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.
Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
Never confuse Motion with Action.
And Five Honorable Mentions:
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 