Tag Archives: ideas

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

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Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
  That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
  And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
  And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
  I have come after them and made repair
  Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
  But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
  To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
  No one has seen them made or heard them made,
  But at spring mending-time we find them there.
 I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
  And on a day we meet to walk the line
  And set the wall between us once again.
 We keep the wall between us as we go.
 To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
 And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
  We have to use a spell to make them balance:
  'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
  We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
 Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
  One on a side. It comes to little more:
  There where it is we do not need the wall:
  He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
 My apple trees will never get across
  And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
 He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
 Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
  If I could put a notion in his head:
  'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
  Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
  What I was walling in or walling out,
  And to whom I was like to give offense.
 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
  That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
  But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
  He said it for himself. I see him there
  Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
  In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
 He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
  Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
 He will not go behind his father's saying,
  And he likes having thought of it so well
  He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

PROMPT: Everyday Things

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Daily writing prompt
What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?
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My wife, movement, new & interesting ideas, play, and epiphanies.

[I’m presuming we’re using the word “thing” in the broadest possible sense — as a stand in for any noun. If it is meant in the narrower common usage of trinkets, gewgaws, baubles, and tchotchkes, then I’ve got nothing.]

PROMPT: Community

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How would you improve your community?
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That’s a tough one because while I see value in communities, I’m also concerned that there is a rising trend toward tribalism and nationalism that will not be good for anyone — not to mention a shift toward virtual communities where anonymity and disconnect lead to people to act as though they were raised by hyenas. (I do know that, in reality, that’s an insult to the marvelous hyena, but I think it makes a sort of point for the non-hyena expert.)

I’ve been amazed at how India manages to have an intense sense of community in such a vastly super-tribal environment. (I’m using “supertribe” in Desmond Morris’s sense — i.e. a community which is too big for everyone to know everyone else, and which has a group dynamic that reflects that fact.) But it’s not as though there isn’t a dark side to this intensity of community — patriarchy, sectarian conflict, disempowered societal segments, etc.

America, by comparison seems to be experiencing a dearth of true community, which is driving people toward virtual “communities,” and in virtual communities people seem to fall into the shittiest versions of themselves. Not to mention the lack of community’s contribution to what I’ve heard called a “mental health crisis.”

I guess my preferences would be that community be: 1.) real and not virtual. 2.) that it exploit the advantages of diverse membership instead of wallowing in homogeneity and group think. 3.) that it doesn’t create overclasses and underclasses. And that, 4.) Community norms minimally negate individual freedoms.

That said, I’m not at all sure that the above criteria can be reconciled. Maybe the tradeoffs are too strong. Maybe – in our super-tribal world – the closest-knit society will always be the most xenophobic [fearful / disliking of outsiders,] and maybe tolerance and egalitarianism will always be accompanied by societal degradation. I have observed a strong inclination for people to think of compassion as a zero-sum game.

As I said, a tough one.

Five Wise Lines from George Carlin [April 2025]

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Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot,
and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant
like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?

I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country,
no matter how tough it is,
that Americans,
when they roll up their sleeves,
can’t completely ignore.

Here’s all you have to know about men and women;
women are crazy,
men are stupid.
And the main reason that women are crazy
is that men are stupid.

I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete.
It’s so fuckin’ heroic.

PROMPT: Don’t Understand

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What’s something most people don’t understand?
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Computational Fluid Dynamics. Also, Nuclear Lensing.

PROMPT: Confident

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Who is the most confident person you know?
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I don’t think that’s a question I can meaningfully answer. I think each person has more confidence and courage in some dimensions of life than in others. A given observer tends to see the person who is the most confident in the areas in which that observer is least confident and think of that person as the most confident — when that person might be quite lacking in confidence in areas to which the observer isn’t being attentive.

It was eye opening to read about Audie Murphy, a man who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for single-handedly taking on a unit of Nazis, a man who had a successful career in film, but also a man who was said to have been tremendously shy and awkward around strangers. It would be all in the context in which one saw Murphy that might make one think he was the most or least confident person around.

Quite frankly, the person who appears the most confident in all aspects of life is probably also the most full of shit.

PROMPT: Hated Question

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What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
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Being a traveler who lives abroad, the answer is simple: “Where are you from?”

As a traveler, I can’t grasp tribal / jingoistic people’s obsession with where one fell out of one’s mom, and it always feels a bit xenophobic — as though, noticing one’s foreignness, there is a rush to determine whether one is one of the tolerable foreigners or one of the really bad ones.

As an introvert, the question offends my preference to be talked to by people who have something to say, and to be left alone by people who are just playing out social programming with the objective of breaking silence that they find objectionable (but which I, as a rule, find delightful.) (Even being highly introverted, I can converse for hours with someone who has something to say on a topic that is neither themselves nor me — i.e. I love ideas but hate small talk and interaction for the sake of interaction.)

Plus, it just gets annoying being asked the same question sixty times a day when I’m in more remote parts — a question, the answer to which will be forgotten in three minutes and is merely sound for sound’s sake. In the unlikely event that one hopes to have an actual conversation with me, one must start with something that is not your culture’s default socially programmed question. One must get to at least the second most commonly asked question, a question varies from person to person (in my case, it’s: “Why are you such an asshole?”)

PROMPT: Favorite People

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Who are your favorite people to be around?
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People who take nothing seriously. A distant second goes to those who take everything seriously. And dead last, being people I avoid at all costs, are those who have a sizable set of ideas that they believe should be treated deadly seriously by everyone, while finding others’ serious stuff to be mockable.

Einstein said there are two ways of viewing the world, as if everything is a miracle or nothing is. I’m sure Einstein recognized that there were many people who, in fact, believed their own sect to have “legitimate miracles,” while believing the miracles of other sects were mere superstition. And what he was really getting at was that the latter stance is presumptuous, indefensible, and – quite frankly – ridiculous. Anyhow, my own spin is that there are two legitimate ways to view the world: to take nothing serious and to take everything seriously. All others are shades of petty narcissism.

[As I think of it, I guess I could have answered more simply with the single word: “Travelers.”]

FIVE WISE LINES FROM WILLIAM JAMES [Feb. 2025]

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Our view of the world is truly shaped
by what we decide to hear.

The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose
one thought over another.

The art of being wise is
the art of knowing what to overlook.

We have grown literally afraid to be poor.
We despise anyone who elects to be poor
in order to simplify and save his inner life.

Whenever two people meet,
there are really six people present.
There is each man as he sees himself,
each man as the other person sees him,
and each man as he really is.

NOTABLE MENTIONS:

We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats
are in our libraries, seeing the books
and hearing the conversation,
but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

FIVE WISE LINES [January 2025]

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“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.”

Philip k. dick

“The Wu and the Yue peoples hate each other. But in the same boat in a storm, they work together like left and right hands.”

SunZi in The ART of War

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks – on your body or on your heart – are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”

anthony bourdain

What allows great kings and generals to win, more frequently than ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge cannot be attained by spirits or deduced or calculated.”

Sunzi in The ART of war

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

T. S. Eliot