Forking time

Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.

        Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

 

 

 

 

Protect and defend

The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.

Margaret Atwood, The Progressive interview 2010

Prayer and possibility

To pray is to breathe,
and possibility is for the self what oxygen is for breathing.
But for possibility alone or for necessity alone to supply
the conditions for the breathing of prayer is no more possible
than it is to breathe pure oxygen or pure nitrogen alone.
For in order to pray there must be a God,
there must be a self plus possibility …
for God is that all things are possible.

        Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

        Robert Frost

Speak up or shut up

Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.

                Tom Lehrer, That Was the Year That Was

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resolved: To work harder at this

It is hard work and great art
    to make life not so serious.
        Prostitutes know this too.

                John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resolved

Be at war with your vices,
at peace with your neighbors,
and let every new year find you a better man.

    Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack