1.11.2021 – sustain a number

sustain a number
questions neither so simple
nor so trivial

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest—in all its ardour and paradoxes—than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems—that is, issues requiring thought beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on whereto travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’.

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton.

According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.

As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, hey, I would.

1.6.2021 – sunny sunshine sounds

sunny sunshine sounds

world spins sunlight shifts
tides scour back and forth endless
everyday motion

Gravity.

Rotation of the Earth.

The moon.

The Sun.

They all come together and pull the ocean up and down the coastline twice a day.

Sitting still on the beach.

The water retreats and the water advances.

Sitting still.

Not moving.

And everything is in motion around you.

Just a little mental gymnastics, and you become the center of the universe and everything revolves around you.

Part of a series based on an afternoon spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.

I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Click here for more Haiku in the BEACH category —

1.4.2021 – you are free to do

you are free to do,
free to say and free to choose
what I tell you to …

Adapted from James Thurber’s Further Fable, “The Bears and the Monkeys.”

Not sure why (oh sure) but it came to mind this morning.

Maybe it was the line, “By sparing you the burden of electing your leaders, we save you from the dangers of choice. No more secret ballots, everything open and aboveboard.”

The Bears and the Monkeys.

In a deep forest there lived many bears. They spent the winter sleeping, and the summer playing leap-bear and stealing honey and buns from nearby cottages. One day a fast-talking monkey named Glib showed up and told them that their way of life was bad for bears. “You are prisoners of pastime,” he said, “addicted to leap-bear, and slaves of honey and buns.”

The bears were impressed and frightened as Glib went on talking. “Your forebears have done this to you,” he said. Glib was so glib, glibber than the glibbest monkey they had ever seen before, that the bears believed he must know more than they knew, or than anybody else. But when he left, to tell other species what was the matter with them, the bears reverted to their fun and games and their theft of buns and honey.

Their decadence made them bright of eye, light of heart, and quick of paw, and they had a wonderful time, living as bears had always lived, until one day two of Glib’s successors appeared, named Monkey Say and Monkey Do. They were even glibber than Glib, and they brought many presents and smiled all the time. “We have come to liberate you from freedom,” they said. “This is the New Liberation, twice as good as the old, since there are two of us.”

So each bear was made to wear a collar, and the collars were linked together with chains, and Monkey Do put a ring in the lead bear’s nose, and a chain on the lead bear’s ring. “Now you are free to do what I tell you to do,” said Monkey Do.

“Now you are free to say what I want you to say,” said Monkey Say. “By sparing you the burden of electing your leaders, we save you from the dangers of choice. No more secret ballots, everything open and aboveboard.” For a long time the bears submitted to the New Liberation, and chanted the slogan the monkeys had taught them: “Why stand on your own two feet when you can stand on ours?”

Then one day they broke the chains of their new freedom and found their way back to the deep forest and began playing leap-bear again and stealing honey and buns from the nearby cottages. And their laughter and gaiety rang through the forest, and birds that had ceased singing began singing again, and all the sounds of the earth were like music.

MORAL: It is better to have the ring of freedom in your ears than in your nose.

Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated by James Thurber, New York, Harpers, 1940.

1.2.202 – whatever it took

whatever it took
humanity to arrive worth
it ultimately

Adapted from the book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

‘For what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the end of the pursuit of wealth, power and pre-eminence?’ asked Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), going on to answer, ‘To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation’ – a set of ambitions to which the creators of the Concorde Room had responded with stirring precision.

As I took a seat in the restaurant, I felt certain that whatever it had taken for humanity to arrive at this point had ultimately been worth it.

Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton. I discovered this book entirely by accident. When searching for books online, I will use the term ‘collections’ and see what turns up. I figure that someone who has taken the time to gather together the etexts of any one author to create a collected works folder is enough for me to see what this author might be all about.

In this case I came across the writing of Alain de Botton. I enjoyed his use of language very much. Much of the words he strings together lend themselves to what I do.

As for his book, I recommend it very much though written in 2009, it misses the added layer of travel under covid but still the picture of the modern airport is worth the read.

12.19.2020 – what we learn next week

what we learn next week
helps understand yesterday
look to the future

Carpe Diem so it says now on coffee mugs and T-shirts.

Seize the day.

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero!

Seize the day, and put very little trust in the future!

Or as Scarlett O’hara says, “Tomorrow is another day.”

My training is in the field of history.

My wife’s training is in market research.

My wife takes today and projects it 6 months into the future.

I cannot comment on today until tomorrow at the earliest and am more comfortable waiting six months.

We get along famously.

Lots of sparks along the road.

But it struck me today how much the past depends on the future.

The old debate on facts and truth.

I love this quote from today’s reading, “postmodernism was a response to Marxism, not an embrace of it, and in fact has been described as the “cultural logic of late capitalism”. In many ways, the defining condition of post-modernity is neoliberalism, so there is no reason for Conservatives not to embrace it. But for politicians, “postmodernism” has become one of those zombie ideas that cannot be killed by facts, no matter how many times academics explain that it does not in fact mean what they say it does.”

Yup.

For the me the keys phrase was “zombie ideas that cannot be killed by facts.”

I can easily apply that to today but what about any day.

And what are the facts?

What we know we don’t know that is to be known?

Where do we go for the facts?

All can agree that there is only one past and one present and one future.

But why did the one that happened happen.

What could have happened that may have made what did happen different.

Maybe this is all too early on a Saturday morning.

I remember an odd little story from the first atom bomb test in the desert in 1945.

There was much anxiety that after spending $2 Billion Dollars, it wouldn’t work.

According to records, physicist Enrico Fermi said maybe they had just spent $2 Billion dollars proving mankind could not make an atom bomb.

Fermi thought the money would have been well spent.

Each morning, each day, each incoming sweep of the tide (yep, live near the beach now) is a new start.

A new start to understanding what happened yesterday.

I spent the last 20 years of my life the TV news business.

Today I can barely watch it.

Much like the feller who worked in a sausage shop for 20 years and after moving on, refused to eat sausage.

The news lives on the blocks on WHO WHAT WHEN WHY and HOW.

But it runs on GET IT FIRST, GET IT FAST and BE ACCURATE (yes this comes last too often).

The first rough draft of history which is credited to The Washington Post’s owner. Phil Graham.

First into print those stories have a way of lingering around.

Look to tomorrow to understand yestarday.

How much will the narrative be changed?

I am reminded of a profile written by James Thurber of a man named Norman Kuehner, newspaper editor of the Columbus Dispatch and Thurber’s boss for several years.

It was Kuehner who taught Thurber to start his story with a wonderful, wordy introduction and a wonderful wordy conclusion.

Then take a pair of scissors and cut out the introduction and conclusion and you would have “A helluva good story.”

Thurber recounted how once he and Kuehner had an argument over a story.

Kuehner disputed the the story as Thurber wrote it and told to Thurber how he felt it happened and how the story should be written.

Thurber asked what if the competing paper, the Ohio State Journal and their version of the story proved to be true?

Thurber supported this version of the story.

“That,” said Mr. Kuehner, “would make it a Journal re-write.”

“I would give it a paragraph on page thirty.”