Poem: Mr. Macklin's Jack O'Lantern

Mr. Macklin takes his knife
And carves the yellow pumpkin face:
Three holes bring eyes and nose to life,
The mouth has thirteen teeth in place.
Then Mr. Macklin just for fun
Transfers the corn-cob pipe from his
Wry mouth to Jack’s, and everyone
Dies laughing! O what fun it is
Till Mr. Macklin draws the shade
And lights the candle in Jack’s skull.
Then all the inside dark is made
As spooky and as horrorful
As Halloween, and creepy crawl
The shadows on the tool-house floor,
With Jack’s face dancing on the wall.
O Mr. Macklin! where's the door?

                    David McCord 

Ghosts

Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts,
    for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

                    Arthur C. Clarke, forward to 2001: A Space Odyssey

 

 

 

 

 

Wonder

Concepts create idols;
    only wonder comprehends anything.
People kill one another over idols.
    Wonder makes us fall to our knees.

                Saint Gregory Of Nyssa

 

 

 

 

 

Something wicked this way comes

Macbeth     Act 4, Scene 1

[A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder. Enter the three Witches]

First Witch: Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed.

Second Witch: Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Third Witch: Harpier cries, 'Tis time, 'tis time.

First Witch:
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one:
Sweltered venom, sleeping got.
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

All:
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
 

Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.

All:
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch:
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Slivered in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

All:
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch:
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

[Enter Hecate, goddess of witchcraft]

Hecate:
O well done. I commend your pains,
And every one shall share i' the gains.
And now about the cauldron sing,
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

[Music and a song, Hecate retires]

Second Witch:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.

            William Shakespeare

Alchemy

MAGIC, n.     An art of converting superstition into coin.

                      There are other arts serving the same high purpose,
                      but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

                                    Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

 

 

 

 

The path of magic

If you choose magic you will never be able to return to the life you once lived.
Your world may be more … exciting … but it will also be more dangerous. Less reliable.
And once you begin to walk the path of magic, you can never step off of it.
Or you can choose the path of science, of rationality.
Live in a normal world. Die a normal death.
Less exciting, undoubtedly. But safer. …
It is your choice Timothy. Always and forever your choice.

            Neil Gaimann, The Books of Magic: The Road to Nowhere

 

 

 

 

 

Scarcity

We have just enough religion to make us hate,
        but not enough to make us love one another.

                Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies

 

 

 

 

 

How to be a genius

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius.
You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind,
although by and large they will lay in a dormant state.
Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result,
test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.
Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say:
"How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

        Gian-Carlo Rota, 1996 lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

 

 

 

 

 

SIncerity?

Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial —
notoriously less stable and less inherent
than the natures of other things.
And insofar as this is the case,
sincerity itself is bullshit.

            Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit

 

 

 

 

Choosing

Life is a difficult choice between our loves and our fears.
Love is the better use of a life, if you can find the courage for it.
Love is hard, brave work, while fear is too easy -
it is an early grave of comfy chairs and magazines and wasted heartbeats and hormones.

            Doris Haddock, Granny D's American Century

 

 

 

Poem: Sunday in Mín ’a Leá / Sunday in Gaza

A gentle Sunday
in Mín ’a Leá
I’m unperturbed
in the garden
my counterpart in Gaza
running out of breath
pleading
to escape
the next missile attack
the fallout of explosions.

A soft slow sleepy Sunday
in Mín ’a Leá
night will fall into silence
a moon will rise
relaxing in the air
but in Gaza
the sky will ignite
in burning flames
houses will crumble
bones shatter.

On this quiet Sunday
in Mín ’a Leá
how easy it is
to mourn Gaza
as I sit in the garden
comfortably
enjoying the scent
of newly cut grass
not a care in the world
but the making of a poem.
Not a care in the world
but the making of a poem?

Cathal Ó Searcaigh

Believe it or not

As far as I'm concerned,
humans have not yet come up with a belief that's worth believing.

            George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty

 

 

 

 

 

Protection

What keeps us from being monsters
        are the great artists who teach us to love.

                Ken Kesey, interview in The Paris Review

 

 

 

 

Problem/Solution, etc.

Society had a crime problem.
    It hired cops to attack crime.
        Now society has a cop problem.

                Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

 

 

 

 

Leading questions

If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
        they don't have to worry about the answers.

                    Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

 

 

 

 

 

Who cares?

Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.

    Daniel Dennett, Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness 

 

 

 

 

Touched by grace

One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as "those evil people" or "those poor people who need our help." Nor must we search for signs of "loveworthiness." Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are.

            Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing about Grace?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Early Frost

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed. 

         Scott Cairns 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similarities

I think being a woman is like being Irish...
    Everyone says you're important and nice,
        but you take second place all the same.

                     Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

 

Good stories

All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending,
        and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning.

                         James Clavell, 1986 interview with Don Swaim 

 

 

 

 

 

Bound for home

But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.

The Zen Poetry of Dōgen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace
translated by Steven Heine

The delights of age

One of the delights known to age,
    and beyond the grasp of youth,
        is that of Not Going.

                    Anthony Burgess

 

 

 

 

 

Planning for the inevitable

I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful
        that an idiot can run them.
                Because sooner or later, one will.

                     Warren Buffett, panel at premier of 2008 documentary I.O.U.S.A. 

 

 

 

 

The spirit's one home

Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always the temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have “not gone up into the gaps.”

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock—more than a maple—a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

 Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

 

 

 

Poem: The Healing Time

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy.

         Pesha Joyce Gertler 

 

 

 

 

 

Good question

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark?
Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?

            Steven Spielberg, Facebook post

 

 

 

 

 

Doubly positive

During a lecture, the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim
that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning,
there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative.
Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah."

        Obituary for Professor Sidney Morgenbesser, The Independent, 2004

Feast of St. Francis

The saints are simple people.
It is the condition of divided allegiance,
doubt and compromise
and the twists and turns of self-deception,
that is complicated,
not holiness.

        Elizabeth Goudge, Saint Francis of Assisi

Consequences

Sometimes the consequences of holding a belief matter more than its truth.

                    Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern times

People are less modern than the times in which they live.

        Louis Menand, Fractured Franchise, The New Yorker magazine

Welcome, October

October, baptize me with leaves!
Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup.
October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets
and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins.
O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!

            Rainbow Rowell, Attachments