Success

Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

    Samuel Beckett, Westward Ho

 

 

 

 

Check, please

Milton Friedman used to argue
that there is no such thing as a free lunch
but at some level of the analysis this has to be false.
The universe exists and who had to pay for it?

            Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments 

 

 

 

 

 

No expectations

My whole religion is this:
    do every duty, and expect no reward for it,
        either here or hereafter.

                Bertrand Russell, Childhood Diary 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Ode

 

We are the music makers,

    And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

    And sitting by desolate streams; —

World-losers and world-forsakers,

    On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

    Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities,

    And out of a fabulous story

    We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

    Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure

    Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying,

    In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

    And Babel itself in our mirth;

And o'erthrew them with prophesying

    To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

    Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration

Is the life of each generation;

    A wondrous thing of our dreaming

    Unearthly, impossible seeming —

The soldier, the king, and the peasant

    Are working together in one,

Till our dream shall become their present,

    And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing

Of the goodly house they are raising;

    They had no divine foreshowing

    Of the land to which they are going:

But on one man's soul it hath broken,

    A light that doth not depart;

And his look, or a word he hath spoken,

    Wrought flame in another man's heart.

And therefore to-day is thrilling

With a past day's late fulfilling;

    And the multitudes are enlisted

    In the faith that their fathers resisted,

And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,

    Are bringing to pass, as they may,

In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,

    The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,

    Ceaseless and sorrowless we!

The glory about us clinging

    Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing:

    O men! it must ever be

That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,

    A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning

    And the suns that are not yet high,

And out of the infinite morning

    Intrepid you hear us cry —

How, spite of your human scorning,

    Once more God's future draws nigh,

And already goes forth the warning

    That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers

    From the dazzling unknown shore;

Bring us hither your sun and your summers;

    And renew our world as of yore;

You shall teach us your song's new numbers,

    And things that we dreamed not before:

Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,

    And a singer who sings no more.

                                Arthur O'Shaughnessy

 

Art

Art is anything you can get away with.

        Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media:The Extensions of Man

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to shine

California, I'll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
Rising up to paradise, I know I'm going to shine. 

    John Perry Barlow, "Estimated Prophet" lyrics, Grateful Dead album Terrapin Station

A trifecta

I love the man that can smile in trouble,
    that can gather strength from distress,
        and grow brave by reflection.

                Thomas Paine, The American Crisis