Pausing Each Day at the Gateless Gate… Then Stepping Through

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[Image: “Tallulah Falls” (1841), by George Cooke. Why this? See the excerpt from Alan Lightman’s essay, below.]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

To Waiting

You spend so much of your time
expecting to become
someone else
always someone
who will be different
someone to whom a moment
whatever moment it may be
at last has come
and who has been
met and transformed
into no longer being you
and so has forgotten you

meanwhile in your life
you hardly notice
the world around you
lights changing
sirens dying along the buildings
your eyes intent
on a sight you do not see yet
not yet there
as long as you
are only yourself

with whom as you
recall you were
never happy
to be left alone for long

(W. S. Merwin [source])

…and:

Wonder begins with the element of surprise. The now almost obsolete word “wonderstruck” suggests that wonder breaks into consciousness with a dramatic suddenness that produces amazement or astonishment. We can no more create a state of wonderment than we can plan a surprise for ourselves. Consider, for example, how strange it would be to say, “I’m going out for a walk and wonder at the dogwoods in bloom.” It may, indeed, happen that the dogwoods will evoke wonder, but we cannot be assured of it prior to the experience.

Because of the suddenness with which it appears, wonder reduces us momentarily to silence. We associate gaping, breathlessness, bewilderment, and even stupor with wonder, because it jolts us out of the world of common sense in which our language is at home. The language and categories we customarily use to deal with experience are inadequate to the encounter, and hence we are initially immobilized and dumbfounded. We are silent before some new dimension of meaning which is being revealed.

(Sam Keen [source])

…and:

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.

To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.

(Terry Tempest Williams [source])

…and:

Anyone can see that if grasping and aversion were with us all day and night without ceasing, who could ever stand them? Under that condition, living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness, and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us. We have periods of rest making us refreshed, alive, well. Why don’t we feel thankful for this everyday Nirvana?

We already know how to let go—we do it every night when we go to sleep, and that letting go, like a good night’s sleep, is delicious. Opening in this way, we can live in the reality of our wholeness. A little letting go brings us a little peace, a greater letting go brings us a greater peace. Entering the gateless gate, we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself.

(Jack Kornfield [source])

From elsewhere:

Wonders

In a wide hoop of lamplight, two children—
a girl and her younger brother—jump marbles
on a star-shaped playboard. Beside them,
in a chair near a window, their father
thinks of his mother, her recent death

and the grief he is trying to gather.
It is late October. The hooplight spreads
from the family, through the window,
to the edge of a small orchard, where
a sudden frost has stripped the fruit leaves
and only apples hang, heavy and still
on the branches.

The man looks from the window, down
to a scrapbook of facts he is reading.
The spider is proven to have memory, he says,
and his son, once again, cocks his small face
to the side, speaks a guttural oh, as if
this is some riddle he is slowly approaching,
as if this long hour, troubled with phrases
and the queer turn in his father’s voice,
is offered as a riddle.

There is the sound of marbles
in their suck-hole journeys, and the skittery
jump of the girl’s shoe
as she waits, embarrassed, for her father
to stop, to return to his known self, thick
and consistent as a family bread.
But still he continues,

plucking scraps from his old book, old
diary of wonders: the vanishing borders
of mourning paper, the ghostly shape
in the candled egg, beak and eye
etched clearly, a pin-scratch of claw.

A little sleet scrapes at the window.
The man blinks, sees his hand on the page
as a boy’s hand, sees his children bent over
the playboard, with the careful pattern
of their lives dropping softly away, like
leaves in a sudden frost—how the marbles
have stalled, heavy and still on their fingers,
and after each phrase the guttural
oh, and the left shoe jumping.

(Linda Bierds [source])

…and:

…many had a lingering feeling that human beings were somehow separated from the rest of nature. Such a view is nowhere better illustrated than in the painting Tallulah Falls (1841) by American painter George Cooke, an artist associated with the Hudson River School. Although this group of artists celebrated nature, they also believed that human beings were set apart from the natural world. Cooke’s painting depicts tiny human figures standing on a small promontory above a deep canyon. The people are dwarfed by tree-covered mountains, massive rocky ledges, and a waterfall pouring down to the canyon below. Not only insignificant in size compared with their surroundings, the human beings are mere witnesses to a scene they are not part of and never could be.

(Alan Lightman [source])

[back to top]

When I Walked onto the Strand, I Recognized Nothing

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[Image: “The Strand at Carmel-by-the-Sea,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (the third stanza included there; this is the complete poem):

On Living

I

Living is no laughing matter:
        you must live with great seriousness
                like a squirrel, for example—
        I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
                I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
        you must take it seriously,
        so much so and to such a degree
      that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
                                your back to the wall,
        or else in a laboratory
                in your white coat and safety glasses,
                you can die for people—
             even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
             even though you know living
                is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
        I mean, you must take living so seriously
             that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—
             and not for your children, either,
             but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
             because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II

Let’s say you’re seriously ill, need surgery—
which is to say we might not get
    from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
    about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
    for the latest newscast…
Let’s say we’re at the front—
  for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
  we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
    but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
    about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say, 
   before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind—
      I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
    we must live as if we will never die.

III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
               and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
  I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even 
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
  in pitch-black space… 
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
                               if you’re going to say “I lived”…

(Nâzim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk [source])

…and (in slightly different form):

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being, to return to Eden, make friends with the snake, and set up our computers among the wild apple trees.

Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution—a melding into the godhead, into love—is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force be-cause to admit it is to acknowledge that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions, and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy. Or, barring that, to turn out a good thin-crust pizza and a strong glass of beer.

(Tom Robbins [source])

From elsewhere:

The history of science can, in fact, be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once accepted as “givens” as phenomena that can now be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles. One can add to the list of the fully explained: the hue of the sky, the orbits of planets, the angle of the wake of a boat moving through a lake, the six-sided patterns of snowflakes, the weight of a flying bustard, the temperature of boiling water, the size of raindrops, the circular shape of the sun. All of these phenomena and many more, once thought to have been fixed at the beginning of time or the result of random events thereafter, have ultimately been explained as necessary consequences of the fundamental laws of nature—laws found by us human beings.

(Alan Lightman [source])

…and:

The Doctor Sighs

as he removes the otoscope
It’s not just the hammer,

anvil, and stirrup, he says.
It’s the blacksmith, too.
And the dry goods store
with the weaselly clerk,
not to mention the saloon
rife with cowboys and
a prostitute with humble
cleavage. And I’m afraid
it’s also the calibrated hearts
in that freezing ten-room
hotel, the mayor’s daughter
weeping into well water,
the moon spreading its
anxious light over everything

In short, Ronald, I’m not
surprised you called
for an appointment today.

(Ron Koertge [source])

…and:

# 28 (“I See What You Did There”): The history of art and philosophy can, in fact, be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that have never been accepted as “givens” as real phenomena that cannot be understood entirely, if at all, in terms of fundamental causes and principles. One can add to the list of the inadequately explained: the circular shape of the sky, the six-sided patterns of planets, the hue of the wake of a bustard moving through a lake, the angle of snowflakes, the temperature of a flying boat, the orbits of water, the size of raindrops, the boiling weight of the sun. None of these phenomena, and many more, are explicable as necessary consequences of the fundamental laws of nature–laws found by us human beings. But there they are: comprehensible, apparently meaningful, even profound, but defying explanation.

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)

…and:

The human body is the most resistant thing there is to magic, ’cause it’s a vessel of will.

(T.L. Huchu [source])

Both of These Things Can Be True (But One May Be Truer)

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[Image: “New York shops don’t try to mislead you,” by Ed Yourdon. (Found it on Flickr, where it was shared under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) I recognized the photographer‘s name immediately: he was a very influential tech guy back in the 1970s, when I started working in software development. I had no idea he was also a prolific photographer… but, well, I guess both of those things could be true, eh?]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (in slightly different form; below is the original):

Man becomes a historical animal preoccupied with the past and the future, and here we encounter the strangest of paradoxes… The historical idea of self, the ego, requires a constant re-living of memories in order to sustain a continuity of its own. It is only aware of itself as a repeatedly up-dated autobiography. The ego does not actually exist — it is an illusion of continuity…

So the conventional ego, the false passport, is built up from an edited picture album of our past. That version often seems more real than we are in the present moment. That is because here/now we are in constant flux and flow, but what we have been is nicely and securely fixed. The false identity is frozen throughout time, a final static noun. And just because it is unchanging we become more clearly identified with that identity card than we do with the real living, moment-to-moment entity.

In order to support the new false self we have to become more and more identified with the past, with old knowledge and a fixed belief system which continue to bolster up our historical selves. And we forget there was ever anything else.

(Yatri [source])

…and:

Every time a thought is born, you are born. When the thought is gone, you are gone. But the ‘you’ does not let the thought go, and what gives continuity to this ‘you’ is thinking. Actually there’s no permanent entity in you, no totality of all your thoughts and experiences. You think that there is ‘somebody’ who is feeling your feelings – that’s the illusion. I can say it is an illusion but it is not an illusion to you.

(U.G. Krishnamurti [source])

…and:

we must

we must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.

nobody is going
to do it
for us.

as the young boys
ski
down the slopes

as the fry cook
gets his last
paycheck

as dog chases
dog

as the chessmaster
loses more than
the game

we must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.

nobody is going
to do it for us,

as the lonely
telephone
anybody
anywhere

as the great beast
trembles
in nightmare

as the final season
leaps into
focus

nobody is going
to do it
for us.

(Charles Bukowski [source])

From elsewhere:

This incapacity to die, ironically but inevitably, throws mankind out of the actuality of living, which for all normal animals is at the same time dying; the result is denial of life (repression). The incapacity to accept death turns the death instinct into its distinctively human and distinctively morbid form. The distraction of human life to the war against death, by the same inevitable irony, results in death’s dominion over life.

(Norman O. Brown [source])

…and:

“There’s a disadvantage in a stick pointing straight,” answered [Father Brown]. “What is it? Why, the other end of the stick always points the opposite way. It depends whether you get hold of the stick by the right end.”

(G.K. Chesterton [source])

…and:

Yes No Days

Every day he thought before he went outside.
If it was a yes day things would be
as they seemed. So everything comes true.
His face a lonely moon in the window, his
house resting on a quiet spine. It took
courage to step from a warm house
on a no day. The world might swing wrong,
and yes, a no day could become
a yes day, and vice versa. There were days
like windows facing out and faces wanting
back in. “Isn’t the sky nice?” he hears
his mother say, so he lets go
of the cat who is right on the brink
of telling all she knows.

(Ralph Burns [source])

…and:

I was intrigued by the fact that even though I had learned that gravity pulls us toward the earth as we orbit the sun—and that there is no real “up” and “down”—my feeling of being down on the ground below the sky had remained unchanged. To shift my perspective, I would sometimes lie outside with my arms and legs outstretched and take in as much of the sky and horizon as possible. Attempting to break free of the familiar feeling of being down here with the moon and stars above me, I would relax all my muscles—surrendering to the force holding me tightly to the surface of our planet—and focus on the truth of my situation: I’m floating around the universe on this giant sphere—suspended here by gravity and going for a ride. Lying there, I could sense that I was in fact looking out at the sky, rather than up. The delight I experienced came from temporarily silencing a false intuition and glimpsing a deeper truth: being on the earth doesn’t separate us from the rest of the universe; indeed, we are and have always been in outer space.

(Annaka Harris [source])

…and:

Happiness

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine

(Jane Kenyon [source])

Painting Eyeballs on Chaos

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[Image: “Piano-sunset,” originally shared by a Flickr user identified only as “Alecska.” Shared here under the same Creative Commons license she offered there.]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

My foot slips on a narrow ledge: in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one…

What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us, what one lama refers to as “the precision and openness and intelligence of the present.” The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. “To be anywhere else is to paint eyeballs on chaos.”

(Peter Matthiessen [source])

…and:

Japanese Shape

The way it forces you to look
watching your step
so as not to turn your ankle
on a rock
or step into water nearby

The way it turns the torso
this way and that
view after view
spaces between spaces
and spaces between

The way it slows you down
step after step
no skipping between
there is no short cut
to the edge of this garden

The way it swirls the vision
into brown and black
and green and light with
sound in the air until
only a blanket remains

The way it stops the mind.

(Harry Palmer [source: none other found, alas!])

…and:

Everybody has seen an image of enfoldment: You fold up a sheet of paper, turn it into a small packet, make cuts in it, and then unfold it into a pattern. The parts that were close in the cuts unfold to be far away. This is like what happens in a hologram. Enfoldment is really very common in our experience. All the light in this room comes in so that the entire room is in effect folded into each part. If your eye looks, the light will be then unfolded by your eye and brain. As you look through a telescope or a camera, the whole universe of space and time is enfolded into each part, and that is unfolded to the eye. With an old-fashioned television set that’s not adjusted properly, the image enfolds into the screen and then can be unfolded by adjustment.

When you are talking to somebody, your whole intention to speak enfolds a large number of words. You don’t choose them one by one. There are any number of examples of the implicate order in our experience of consciousness. Any one word has behind it a whole range of meaning enfolded in thought.

Consciousness is unfolded in each individual. Clearly, it’s shared between people as they look at one object and verify that it’s the same. So any high level of consciousness is a social process. There may be some level of sensorimotor perception that is purely individual, but any abstract level depends on language, which is social. The word, which is outside, evokes the meaning, which is inside each person.

Meaning is the bridge between consciousness and matter. Any given array of matter has for any particular mind a significance. The other side of this is the relationship in which meaning is immediately effective in matter. Suppose you see a shadow on a dark night. If it means “assailant,” your adrenaline flows, your heart beats faster, blood pressure rises, and muscles tense. The body and all your thoughts are affected; everything about you has changed. If you see that it’s only a shadow, there’s an abrupt change again.

Meaning enfolds the whole world into me, and vice versa – that enfolded meaning is unfolded as action, through my body and then through the world.

(David Bohm [source])

From elsewhere:

In a 2016 TED talk, [ecologist Suzanne Simard] described the thrill of uncovering the interdependence of two tree species in her research on mycorrhizal networks—elaborate underground networks of fungi that connect individual plants and transfer water, carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients and minerals. Simard was studying the levels of carbon in two species of tree, the Douglas fir and the paper birch, when she discovered that the two species were engaged “in a lively two-way conversation.” In the summer months, when the fir needed more carbon, the birch sent more carbon to the fir; at other times when the fir was still growing but the birch needed more carbon because it was leafless, the fir sent more carbon to the birch—revealing that the two species were in fact interdependent.

(Annaka Harris [source; the book itself is here and elsewhere])

…and:

The Gate

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

(Marie Howe [source])

…and:

# 26: An old magazine used to run a regular monthly feature: “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power.” The language-learning principle it promoted, in a smaller font: Use a word three times, and it’s yours. Ideally, I guess, the word in question should be a word you know is a word, but have never used before.

So let’s try that now. Let’s try it with, say… three sentences using the word Thermopylae.

  • Thermopylae was the site of a famous historic battle.
  • The first and maybe only time I heard the word “Thermopylae” spoken aloud was in a high school or college Latin class.
  • Thermopylae was in Greece, wasn’t it — Macedonia, maybe? Asia Minor?

Huh. Now let’s repeat the process, this time just in our heads… while changing the title phrase “Word Power” to “Memory,” and the slogan’s object from “a word” to “a moment.” (It pays to increase your memory… Use a moment three times, and it’s yours!) Ready? Go..!

[pause to construct the memory]

How about that? The moment slips into place almost effortlessly, like a leaf dropped from your fingertips in a windstorm… and then drops out of sight, snatched away in the cloud of moments around it. The moment is no more “yours” than the word Thermopylae was a (yes) moment ago.

Wonder what that could mean?

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)

Recognize Your Ghost Road, and Stay on It — and Keep Moving

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[Image: “That Next Step Is a Lulu (NYC High Line, April 2025),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Ghost Road

You stand and look out
over a field of wheat
that ripples and rolls
farther than you can see.

When you recover
from the dazzle of sunlight
playing on golden brown

you see two parallel
lines or traces
of an old ghost road

looping and bending
toward the horizon
and infinity beyond…

What spirits hover here
waiting for harvest?
Whose breath blows
over this grain?
Whose voices whisper
when wind blows?

(Norbert Krapf [source: unknown])

…and (excerpted, and in slightly different form):

Creation is what we do while we’re waiting to die. If we’re not, we sit around watching reruns of I Love Lucy, eating potato chips, and drinking Diet Coke, or Pepsi, or “lite” beer — and we fall asleep. We don’t even know when, finally, out of boredom and frustration, we die. And, even though we will die just the same, we can choose to stay awake, to create. When we create, we live. When we make love, when we lose ourselves in the passion and intense sensation of coupling, our beautiful matter blends creating new matter, new life, and we are alive. When we take sticks and paste and crayons and cobble them together into God knows what, we are alive. When we grow greate swathes and blobs of color against barren walls, or sing a lullaby to a child, or knit our first rough scarf, we are alive.

Creation is both the act and celebration of this magic, the fleeting mystery that it is to be alive.

(Ralph L. Wahlstrom [source])

,,,and:

Remember, the universe has a lot of things going on that we don’t know about. We have no idea what the universe is like. What it wants to have happen. We don’t know what’s trying to come through us… Say Yes to what is trying to come through you and Shazam! You’re answering a score of seemingly unrelated problems that seem to be about this piece of writing, but — you find out years later — are answers to other pieces of writing, or to issues in your life, or to problems you were going to have in the future but now won’t.

(Andy Couturier [source])

…and:

Obake, the Japanese “ghost,” is exactly what its name suggests: o is an honorific prefix, while bake is a noun from bakeru, […], the verb meaning “undergo change.” Japanese ghosts, then, are essentially transformations. They are one sort of thing that mutates into another, one phenomenon that experiences shift and alteration, one meaning that becomes unstuck and twisted into something else. Obake undermine the certainties of life as we usually understand it…

Centuries ago in India, the Buddha taught that nothing in this world is stable, no form of existence is anything more than a wandering through flux. People may think they have a self, and may strive to build an ego, or worry about their personal consistencies or reputations, but these concerns are delusions. A “self” is an imaginary construct; and so, in a sense, “transformation” is actually the truest manifestation of being. Obake, the ultimate transformers, point up the folly of our human security in the unchanging status of things, and obliterate our proud sense of understanding the structure of the world.

(Tim Screech [source])

From elsewhere:

A Portrait of a Dog as an Older Guy

When his owner died in 2000 and a new family
moved into their Moscow apartment,
he went to live with mongrels in the park.
In summer there was plenty of food, kids
often left behind sandwiches, hotdogs and other stuff.
He didn’t have a big appetite,
still missing his old guy.
He too was old, the ladies no longer excited him,
and he didn’t burn calories chasing them around.
Then winter came and the little folk abandoned the park.
The idea of eating from the trash occurred to him
but the minute he started rummaging in the
overturned garbage container, a voice
in his head said: “No, Rex!”
The remnants of a good upbringing lower
our natural survival skills.

I met him again in the early spring of 2001.
He looked terrific. Turning gray became him.
His dark shepherd eyes were perfectly bright,
like those of a puppy.
I asked him how he sustained himself
in this new free-market situation
when even the human species suffered from malnutrition.
In response he told me his story;
how at first he thought that life without his man
wasn’t worth it, how those
who petted him when he was a pet
then turned away from him, and how one night
he had a revelation.

His man came to him in his sleep,
tapped him on his skinny neck and said:
“Let’s go shopping!” So the next morning he took the subway
and went to the street market
where they used to go together every Sunday and where
vendors recognized him and fed him
to his heart’s content.
“Perhaps you should move closer to that area?”
I ventured.—“No, I’ll stay here,” he sighed,
“oldies shouldn’t change their topography. That’s
what my man said.”
Indeed, he sounded like one himself.

(Katia Kapovich [source])

…and:

Why Be Liberal?

Fundamentals first: be liberal because you already — irreversibly, fundamentally, biologically — are liberal.

What happens at the cellular level as we go through life? Cells mutate. They grow, divide, multiply. They consume, they excrete; breathe in and out; become other cells, which become other cells, which hook up with yet more cells and become something entirely different.

And when we die? It all stops. That’s not the result. It’s the REASON we die. Death, at a cellular level, is indistinguishable from stasis.

Everyone wants to attain comfortable, stable levels of activity. Everyone — especially nowadays — longs for yesterday, or the day before, or a day ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Like the scorpion’s sting, nostalgia is in our nature, up here in the thin air at the top of Maslow’s pyramid. So go ahead. Relax. You don’t have to change everything, all the time.

But when we completely stop changing we don’t go happily along from one day to the next, each tomorrow indistinguishable from each today which differs not at all from every yesterday. No. To stop changing, we must stop eating (to eat is to change one form of matter into another, or into raw energy). We must no longer sleep, for that is a change in state from consciousness to the alternative. And if we stop changing while asleep, we don’t wake up.

When we stop changing, we die.

Conservatives, especially when operating in full-bore legislate-morality mode, often declare themselves as crusaders on behalf of life. Bullshit. They deny life itself.

(FLJerseyBoy, A Dog Starv’d [source])

This Container Is Not the Thing Contained

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[Image: I’m not 100% sure I know what this depicts, but have to admit that it got my attention when I saw it on Flickr, courtesy of an account run by someone styling themselves as “Halloween HJB.” (This Flickr user seems to specialize in photographing vintage prints and other images, and then cleaning up and otherwise enhancing these photos for visitors’ appreciation. I’m reproducing it here under that user’s Creative Commons license; thank you! For more background about the artist and the subject, see the note at the foot of this post.]

Thanks, as ever, to whiskey river: lighting my way for over 20 years of blogging, on Fridays and otherwise.

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Quantum Consciousness

I believe that if we try to examine the nature of our consciousness we will find at its basis it exhibits quantum like qualities. Seen from a distant, large scale and external perspective, we seem to be able to structure our consciousness in an exact and precise way, articulating thoughts and linking them together into long chains of arguments and intricate structures. Our consciousness can build complex images through its activity and seems to have all the qualities of predictability and solidity. The consciousness of a talented architect is capable of designing and holding within itself an image of large solid structures such as great cathedrals or public buildings. A mathematician is capable of inwardly picturing an abstract mathematical system, deriving its properties from a set of axioms. A solo cellist is able to hold the whole musical structure of a Elgar’s Cello Concerto or Bach’s Cello Suites in his or her consciousness when preparing for a performance.

In this sense our consciousness might appear as an ordered and deterministic structure, capable of behaving like and being explicable in the same terms as other large scale structures in the world. However, this is not so. For if we, through introspection, try to examine the way in which we are conscious, in a sense to look at the atoms of our consciousness, this regular structure disappears. Our consciousness does not actually work in such an ordered way. We only nurture an illusion if we try to hold to the view that our consciousness is at root an ordered deterministic structure. True, we can create the large scale designs of the architect, the abstract mathematical systems, a cello concerto, but anyone who has built such structures within their consciousness knows that this is not achieved by a linear deterministic route.

Our consciousness is at its root a maverick, ever moving, jumping from one perception, feeling, thought, to another. We can never hold it still or focus it at a point for long. Like the quantum nature of matter, the more we try to hold our consciousness to a fixed point, the greater the uncertainty in its energy will become. So when we focus and narrow our consciousness to a fixed center, it is all the more likely to suddenly jump with a great rush of energy to some seemingly unrelated aspect of our inner life. We all have such experiences each moment of the day. As in our daily work we try to focus our mind upon some problem only to suddenly experience a shift to some other domain in ourselves, another image or emotional current intrudes then vanishes again, like an ephemeral virtual particle in quantum theory.

Those who begin to work upon their consciousness through some kinds of meditative exercises will experience these quantum uncertainties in the field of consciousness in a strong way.

In treating our consciousness as if it were a digital computer or deterministic machine after the model of 19th century science, I believe we foster a limited and false view of our inner world. We must now take the step towards a quantum view of consciousness, recognizing that at its base and root our consciousness behaves like the ever flowing sea of the sub-atomic world. The ancient hermeticists pictured consciousness as the Inner Mercury. Those who have experienced the paradoxical way in which the metal Mercury is both dense and metallic and yet so elusive, flowing and breaking up into small globules, and just as easily coming together again, will see how perceptive the alchemists were of the inner nature of consciousness, in choosing this analogy. Educators who treat the consciousness of children as if it were a filing cabinet to be filled with ordered arrays of knowledge are hopelessly wrong.

(Adam McLean [source])

From elsewhere:

We don’t think that a camera or a computer has an experience of seeing blue even though they also process light waves and can distinguish between blue and other wavelengths of light. And the same goes for plants of course. Plants distinguish between different wavelengths of light and the further processing of these distinctions affects their subsequent behavior. But we assume that plants, cameras, and computers can do all of this without having a felt experience. And so the mystery is, again, why do some organisms have a felt experience of that processing? I often use a worm as an example because we don’t know if worms are conscious. They have brains and central nervous systems, but it’s not at all clear whether the lights are on for a worm—whether it feels like something to be a worm. But if it does, it’s obviously very minimal and nothing like our human experience…

[Quoting philosopher Rebecca Goldstein:]

Sure, consciousness is a matter of matter. What else could it be? Since that’s what we are. But still, the fact that some hunks of matter have an inner life is unlike any other properties of matter we have yet encountered, much less accounted for. The laws of matter in motion can produce this. All this? Suddenly matter wakes up and takes in the world.

(Annaka Harris [source; the “audio documentary” from which this is excerpted is here — Harris’s book on the subject is here, and elsewhere])

…and:

My high school trigonometry, physics, and calculus teacher once bent my mind with a discussion of fundamental properties of the universe: things which could be “measured,” sort of, but which were not readily definable. These included concepts like length, time, mass, and so on. The best you could do was to “define” them by their synonyms; you could say that length is the same thing as distance, for example. Sometimes you could “define” them more precisely in terms of one another — for instance, “length is the distance an [object, etc.] travels in a given unit of time.” But when you tried in pure terms to define “time,” say, you were stuck by the limitations of human language to grasp physical realities.

(For what it’s worth, the Merriam-Webster site as of this writing says that time is “the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues.” Haha, yeah, right, M-W — nice try, trying to slip that simple synonym period past us by embedding it in a forest of heavy and altogether vague verbiage.)

I’ve often wondered if consciousness, too, might be a fundamental property of certain forms of matter, and this seems to be what Annaka Harris is getting at. As with length and time and so on, it seems to be inseparable from the “thing” which expresses the property of consciousness…

And yet, it’s also something more — something other — isn’t it? Are the contents of this particular jar the same as the jar itself? If you take away the jar, why should the goop inside vanish?

I dunno. I can’t see it, myself.

(JES)

__________

About the image: The original print apparently dated to 1920, by a Spanish (born in Puerto Rico) artist named José Cuchy Arnau. It seems to have been an illustration for an early 20th-century pulp detective story featuring the popular (fictional) private investigator Nat Pinkerton; the title of the print (if not the story), apparently, was “Dinner with a Head.” Most of that information — including a capsule bio of Arnau, and an unretouched photo of the illustration — I found here. (The page is in Spanish, but Google Translate seems to do a decent job of converting it for us monolingual types.) At a guess, that’s our PI hero skulking behind the curtain while the grisly activity in the foreground unfolds.

As for Nat Pinkerton himself, there’s a kind of skimpy Wikipedia article (mostly about a film of a Nat Pinkerton story)… but this page at Jesse Nevins’s online “Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes” is much more entertaining. I mean, come on:

Pinkerton intervenes to solve the conspiracy behind President McKinley’s assassination. Pinkerton fights “Chinese Karl,” the Yellow Peril lord of New York’s Chinatown, fights pirates on the Hudson, a killer mesmerist, a rogue lion tamer, Oka-Yuma, an Evil Surgeon, a thinly-disguised Irene Adler, nihilists in Chicago, a monstrous altered hound courtesy of the Dr. Moreau-like Mad Scientist Doctor Myann, a murderous orangutan, the Big-Headed Dwarf Genius Yellow Peril Li Lo Tsching, a U-boat pirate, a lethal Lupin, a subterranean city inhabited by the descendants of Lost Race escaped slaves, and Professor Fox, Pinkerton’s Moriarty.

Quite a guy, huh?

[back to top]

RAMH@17: What Goes Around…

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Happy 17th birthday to Running After My Hat (with thanks to the visitors — some known, many anonymous, and quite a few with suspicious email addresses who really, really want my help in ways I’ll never be prepared to offer)!

My custom here over the years has been to open with a playlist you can listen to as you read through the balance of the post. Let’s try this one: the soundtrack to the 2019 miniseries (on the Hulu streaming service) of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. I wasn’t bowled over by the adaptation itself — it was okay, it did have some affecting moments, and I liked many of the performances, but as a whole I just found myself wanting, y’know, more. But the soundtrack: exceptional! The “official” soundtrack on Spotify, however, doesn’t include all the music, by all the same performers, which featured in the series as broadcast; this enterprising Spotify user did the hard work of pulling the thing together.

Also, it occurs to me now that finally catching the damn hat after 22 years would be a terrific blogging goal for me, eh?

Catch-22 has been a significant book in my life. Years ago, I wrote up a guest piece about it for a onetime blog about reading called, aptly, The Book Book… While the blog itself is shuttered, I’ve still got a copy of the text lying around; I should probably share it here, eventually. Eventually.

So, now: let’s talk about Running After My Hat as it is these days.

For starters, anyone who stops by here regularly knows not to expect anything other than a weekly whiskey river Fridays post: a sort of dialogue of quotations between that long-running blog (and its archive) and my own reading. If you get other stuff, I imagine, it shows up like a pixel-sized blip on the radar screen of your busy online life.

But anyone who actually reads those Friday posts on a regular basis, over time, may have noticed one thing about them: for some weeks now, I’ve been sampling only from the whiskey river archive, called whiskey river’s commonplace book — nothing from the main blog’s current offerings. Why is that? Because there have been no current offerings from whiskey river itself since December 4, 2024.

As I’ve said several times over the years — here and elsewhere — I know nothing of the whiskey river blogger(s): I have no names, no way of contacting them, and no idea if they might have simply decamped to another platform. I see hints now and then of their presence elsewhere, and of course I know of non-mysterious references to a “Whiskey River” without any certainty that it’s, well, my person(s). (There’s the Willie Nelson song, and at least one tavern chain, and the work of a wonderful professional photographer, and the gods know how many miscellaneous others. I do know how to use Google, y’know. Heh.) I once — four years ago — got a comment here from the blogger, which still counts as a primo highlight of my entire online life (now four decades old)… it felt like the touch of an Olympian finger.

I’m an adult, familiar with the vagaries of the online world; I know people can just drop out of sight without advance warning or after-the-fact explanation. I know there are — ever were — few truly unique blogs, and so I can always look to those others if I wish to strike up a similar conversation with one of them. (The whiskey river blogroll — called “the torrent” in its sidebar — and their blogrolls are a good starting point.)

My best guess about whiskey river‘s disappearance? The timing: one month after the calamitous 2024 US Presidential election. From what little I’ve been able to imagine about the persona(s) behind their blog, it’s pretty clear they must have been thunderstruck by the unconscionable stupidity (or naivete, if I’m inclined to charity) of a plurality of voters in that election. As was I; as were pretty much everyone in my first-hand experience.

But damn. I’m still heartbroken by the whiskey river blogger’s absence, and expect I will remain so for a long, long time.

In other RAMH news, such as it is…

I mentioned in last year’s anniversary post that I’d recently dipped into the Substack world: a “long-form” social-media sort of world. (We could pick nits and point out that, duh, that’s what blogging used to be, but I’ve always believed that Internet publishing platforms — like people — are allowed to call themselves whatever they want, and to ask others to use the same terms.)

Essentially, what I’ve got over there at the moment is an extension of the Running After My Hat “brand,” so to speak. (Others include a Tumblr account (more or less used for crossposting from here), a recently moribund Facebook page (more or less used for crossposting from Instagram), a Bluesky account (still trying to figure this out), and maybe one or two other things I’ve experimented with.)

So what’s up specifically with me on Substack? Mostly, I’ve got two series running at the moment while I figure out my “identity” there:

  • #jesstorypix (“ambiguous microfictions in the service of strange photographs”): Each post consists of a photo I’ve taken at some time or another, and a little “microfiction” which the photo inspired. What’s the “micro-” prefix for? Pretty much, it just means a hundred words, maybe more, maybe less — and most of them are not even complete fictions, but simply invite the reader to fill in the gaps as they’d like. (Those gaps often occur at the end of the story, and are flagged with an ellipsis — as with this recent example.) All the #jesstorypix posts are publicly viewable — as far as I know, they don’t even require a Substack account.
  • 23kpc: according to the capsule description at the main archive page, “Science fiction for the non-SF reader: detectives from Hollywood’s Golden Age, solving mysteries… and transplanted to a cruise ship carved from an asteroid to sail the galaxy.” Each weekly post in this series contains a chapter (sometimes more) from a book I’ve been fiddling with for a long time. I’ve actually posted a couple of things about 23kpc here in the past — one from ten years ago (!), and one from just this past December. I’m using this series primarily to get me to “The End,” but I’m also using it to experiment with Substack’s paid-subscriptions model: the first seven chapters (and all of the story, “Open and Shut,” which inspired the full-length story) — they’re all free to read, but for anything beyond that you’ve gotta subscribe. The subscriptions are dirt cheap, $5/month (i.e., $1+ per chapter), but so far I have induced only a couple of people to pay for it. (On the other hand, a couple dozen-plus kind folks do maintain free subscriptions. Plus I’m a crap marketer — some things never change.) If you’re reading this, and you’d like a free one-month subscription — free access to all of 23kpc, and whatever else I post there — just shoot me an email (runningaftermyhat at johnesimpson dot com) with the subject JES23kpc and I’ll set you up.

I hope to get up to other things on Substack eventually; it’s a heck of a lot easier to find new subscribers that way, free or paid, than it is to find new readers of the original RAMH. Or maybe I won’t, who knows?

In the meantime, as I say every year: thank you (whoever you are) for even intermittently — even once! — reading Running After My Hat!

_______

P.S. Sharp-eyed readers (which of course includes all of you) will notice that this post has been cleverly — okay, okay, deceptively — back-dated to make it seem to be “dated” as tradition dictates.

What Do You Want to See? Why Can’t You See It Already?

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[Image: “Seeing In,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

NOTE: An evening at the theatre. It occurred to me that there is something weird about someone wanting to be someone else. And even more so about someone sitting down for a couple of hours to look at someone they don’t know, pretending to be someone else, talking to someone who is also pretending to be someone else. A dialogue, furthermore, invented by somebody who imagined they were pretending to be each of these in turn.

(Alan Fletcher [source])

…and:

Enlightenment is a Gamble

Time to cash in your chips
put your ideas and beliefs on the table.
See who has the bigger hand
you or the Mystery that pervades you.

Time to scrape the mind’s shit
off your shoes
undo the laces
that hold your prison together
and dangle your toes into emptiness.

Once you’ve put everything
on the table
once all of your currency is gone
and your pockets are full of air
all you’ve got left to gamble with
is yourself.

Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top
of the highest stakes table.
Place yourself as the bet.
Look God in the eyes
and finally
for once in your life
lose.

(Adyashanti [source, in different format])

…and:

Surely you remember

After they all leave,
I remain alone with the poems,
some poems of mine, some of others.
I prefer poems that others have written.
I remain quiet, and slowly
the knot in my throat dissolves.
I remain.

Sometimes I wish everyone would go away.
Maybe it’s nice, after all, to write poems.
You sit in your room and the walls grow taller.
Colors deepen.
A blue kerchief becomes a deep well.

You wish everyone would go away.
You don’t know what’s the matter with you.
Perhaps you’ll think of something.
Then it all passes, and you are pure crystal.

After that, love.
Narcissus was so much in love with himself.
Only a fool doesn’t understand
he loved the river, too.

You sit alone.
Your heart aches, but
won’t break.
The faded images wash away one by one.
Then the defects.
A sun sets at midnight. You remember
the dark flowers too.

You wish you were dead or alive or
somebody else.
Isn’t there a country you love? A word?
Surely you remember.

Only a fool lets the sun set when it likes.
It always drifts off too early
westward to the islands.

Sun and moon, winter and summer
will come to you,
infinite treasures.

(Dahlia Ravikovitch, translated by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch [source])

From elsewhere:

In the past people criticized me for being too intellectual, but study and reading and the exchange of ideas has not only made my life interesting, they have also been the source of my values and actions. I am what I am because of my ideas, and I don’t apologize for enjoying the life of the mind and imagination. Intellectual people have also criticized me for being too much in the heart, being too involved in people’s lives and not maintaining a distance proper to a writer and thinker. They also accuse me of being lightweight in the realm of ideas, but I think they may be reacting to the interests of my heart and my attempts to make rich ideas attractive to all kinds of people. Some want me to be more of an activist, some want me less easygoing, and some want me to be part of a movement or an organization. Meanwhile, in the din, I play my piano and write. It isn’t always easy to practice the virtues of wisdom, compassion, skillful means, wonder, and serenity. Especially serenity. The world might like you to do something else.

(Thomas Moore [source])

…and:

The Convert

When in nineteen-thirty-seven, Etta Moten, sweetheart
of our Art Study group, kept her promise, as if clocked,
to honor my house at our first annual tea, my pride

tipped sky, but when she, Parisian-poised and as smart
as a chrome-toned page from Harper’s Bazaar, gave my shocked
guests this hideous African nude, I could have cried.

And for many subsequent suns, we, who had placed apart
this hour to proclaim our plunge into modern art, mocked
her “Isn’t he lovely?” whenever we eyed this thing,

for by every rule we’d learned, we’d been led to discern
this rankling figure as ugly. It hunched in a squat
as if someone with maliciously disfiguring intent

had flattened it with a press, bashing its head,
bloating its features, making huge bulging blots
of its lips and nose, and as my eyes in dread anticipation

pulled downward, there was its navel, without a thread
of covering, ruptured, exposed, protruding from a pot
stomach as huge as a mother-to-be’s, on short, bent legs,

extending as far on each side as swollen back limbs
of a turtle. I could look no farther and nearly dispensed
with being polite while pretending to welcome her gift.

But afterwards, to the turn of calendar pages, my eyes would skim
the figure appraising this fantastic sight,
until, finally, I saw on its stern

ebony face, not a furniture polished, shellacked shine,
but a radiance, gleaming as though a small light
had flashed internally; and I could discern

through the sheen that the bulging eyes
were identical twins to the bulging nose.
The same symmetrical form was dispersed again

and again through all the bulges, the thighs
and the hands and the lips, in reverse, even the toes
of this fast turning beautiful form were a selfsame chain,

matching the navel. This little figure stretched high
in grace, in its with-the-grain form and from-within-glow,
in its curves in concord. I became a hurricane

of elation, a convert undaunted, who wanted to flaunt
her discovery, parade her fair-contoured find.

Art clubs, like leaves in autumn fall,
scrabble against concrete and scatter.
And Etta Moten, I read, is at tea with the Queen.

But I find myself still framing word structures
of how much these blazing forms ascending the centuries
in their muted sheens, matter to me.

(Margaret Danner [source])

Choosing Which Choice to Make

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[Image: “Why Choose When You Can Have Both?,” by Tom Waterhouse: one of my favorite photographers on Flickr. As always when I share one of them: thank you for the generous Creative Commons license!]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

This is how the technique works: faced with a problem, one doesn’t feebly sit back and wait for things to happen. Neither does one toss a coin, or consult an astrologer, and hope that the outcome will prove the right one. Not at all. The very definite action to be taken falls into four stages:

(i) See yourself to be the Ground or Bottom Line for the pros and cons of the problem to arise from — as many of them and in as much detail as may be. Encourage them to arrange themselves in all sorts of ways. Live with that display, brood on it, sleep on it, but don’t go hankering after a decision. As entertaining the problem in all its aspects, as the Screen for them to come and go on, as their Mirror, you remain neutral. Among the exhibits, however, you may well find, prominently featured, a dateline for the problem’s solution. Brood on that, too.

(ii) One morning on waking, or during the day when you are preoccupied with some chore, the completed pattern of things to come arrives, spontaneously and unannounced, from the Bottom Line. So inevitable it seems, so conclusively does it resolve your problem, that you are left in no doubt that here is the right decision, arrived at in the right way at the right time. It has been immaculately conceived in you and for you but not by you. Certainly not by you the human being. Accordingly, it arrives carrying the authority of its parentage, which is the real You, the Source, the World’s Beginning and the World’s End.

(iii) Now it is the turn of that decision itself, of that seemingly so right design, to go on display above your Bottom Line: and to reveal its limitations and weak spots. All manner of doubts and difficulties, and dilemmas about how to give effect to the decision, are now likely to appear. Again, you don’t solve them by choosing between possible alternatives. You stay with them till they, in turn, are ripe and ready to resolve themselves.

(iv) Finally, the plan is implemented. With interest, perhaps with awe, you watch it take shape. At no time do you feel that you are moulding or forging that shape. It forms in you as cloud-shapes form in the sky, or intricate patterns in a kaleidoscope.

Such, then, is the technique of No-choice, resulting in no stress of the superfluous and toxic sort. It works. It works creatively, coming up with unforced and unpredictable and truly inspired solutions that you couldn’t possibly take personal credit for. And it works like that because, to tell the truth, it is not a technique at all, not a useful dodge for relieving you of the pains of indecision, and certainly not a recipe for a quiet life at all costs. No: it works because it’s the way you are built, the way you function in any case, whether you realize it or not. All this choosing one thing in preference to another is illusory, a great cover-up. Separate individuals, as such, are powerless to make the slightest difference in a universe where every one of them is tightly controlled by the rest. Pretending otherwise, pretending that, as our sole selves, we exercise free will, is as absurd and dishonest as it is vainglorious — and stressful. Only the Source of all, under the sway of none, has free will; and only deeds which are seen to proceed from it, which are referred back to it, which are felt to be its own deeds — only these carry its marvellous smell, the smell of an originality and rightness which belongs solely to that Origin. To live the choiceless life that we have been describing is not fatalism. It is not giving up the struggle and accepting that one is a machine within a Machine. It is to identify with the Machine’s Inventor, to take one’s stand in Freedom itself. It is to be one’s Source, to choose what flows from it, and to perceive it as very good.

(Douglas (D.E.) Harding [source])

From elsewhere:

Dimity had once seen a picture of a real ocean when she went with Rowena to Commoner Town to pick up some imported fabric. It had been hanging on the fabric merchant’s wall, a picture of a sea on Sanctity. She remembered saying at the time how much the imaged expanse of water looked like grass. Someone had laughed at this, saying it was the grass that looked like water. How would one know which looked like which?

(Sherri Tepper [source])

…and:

Father Brown’s figure remained quite dark and still; but in that instant he had lost his head. His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million… it was real inspiration—important as rare crises—when whosoever shall lose his head the same shall save it.

(G.K. Chesterton [source])

…and:

Say what you will about classical music, one thing it has going for it is that it lets your mind wander. Rock bands, blues bands—and yes, salsa bands too—they’re all intent on securing your undivided attention. That’s what the drums and amplifiers are there for. But classical musicians seem more willing to let you settle down, settle in, and follow your thoughts wheresoever they might lead you.

It’s a little like the wardrobe in that children’s book, the one where the plucky girl passes through the coats and finds herself in a whole new world. One moment you’re in Carnegie Hall listening to a sonata, and the next thing you know you’re wandering in a forest where the snow’s beginning to fall, and there in a little clearing surrounded by pines you come upon a lamppost.

Now, on the one hand you’re thinking: What the heck is a lamppost doing in the middle of a snowy wood? But on the other hand, it seems perfectly natural to find it there. There’s something so friendly and inviting about a lamppost that it’s a welcome addition wherever it happens to appear.

(Amor Towles [source])

If You’ve Gotta Argue, Maybe Start with Yourself?

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[Image: “Jw Allosaurus meets Rl Allosaurus,” by a user on DeviantArt identified only as “Allosaurus28.” My understanding is that “Jw” represents the dinosaur as depicted in the Jurassic World film series; “Rl,” as it’s believed to have looked in real life (see Wikipedia for much more information).]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that – well, lucky you.

(Philip Roth [source])

…and:

It’s vital to remember who you really are. It’s very important. It isn’t a good idea to rely on other people to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.

(Terry Pratchett [source])

…and:

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

(Muriel Rukeyser [source: not canonical, but see here])

…and (in slightly different form):

The Argument Clinic

Man: Ah. I’d like to have an argument, please.

Receptionist: Certainly sir. Have you been here before?

Man: No, I haven’t, this is my first time.

Receptionist: I see. Well, do you want to have just one argument, or were you thinking of taking a course?

Man: Well, what’s the cost?

Receptionist: Well, it’s one pound for a five minute argument, but only eight pounds for a course of ten.

Man: Well, I think it would be best if I perhaps started with just the one and then see how it goes.

Receptionist: Fine. Well, I’ll see who’s free at the moment.

(Pause)

Receptionist: Mr. DeBakey’s free, but he’s a little bit conciliatory. Ah yes, try Mr. Barnard; room 12.

Man: Thank you.

(Walks down the hall, opens door)

Mr Barnard: WHAT DO YOU WANT?!

Man: Well, I was told outside that…

Mr Barnard: DON’T GIVE ME THAT, YOU SNOTTY-FACED HEAP OF PARROT DROPPINGS!

Man: What?

Mr Barnard: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE REALLY MAKES ME PUKE, YOU VACUOUS, COFFEE-NOSED, MALODOROUS PERVERT!

Man: Look, I CAME IN HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT, I’m not going to just stand…!!

Mr Barnard: OH, I’m sorry, but this is abuse.

Man: Oh, I see, well, that explains it…

(Monty Python [source, but see the note below])

From elsewhere:

When that mad medley of fun and fancy, of grossness and delicacy, “The Playboy of the Western World,” was put on the American stage, men laughed—generally at the wrong time—out of the hopeless confusion of their minds. The “Playboy” was admittedly an enigma. The night I saw it, the audience, under the impression that it was anti-Irish, or anti-Catholic, or anti-moral, or anti-something, they were not sure what, hurled denunciations and one missile—which looked strangely like a piece of pie—at the ?actors. It was a disgraceful scene, but not without its humorous side; for when the riotous interruptions had subsided, an elderly man arose, and, with the manner of an invited speaker at a public dinner, began, “From time immemorial”—But the house had grown tired of disturbances, and howled him down. He waited for silence, and then in the same composed and leisurely manner began again, “From time immemorial”—At this point one of the policemen who had been restoring order led him gently but forcibly out of the theatre; the play was resumed; and what it was that had happened from time immemorial we were destined never to know.

(Agnes Repplier [source])

…and:

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

(H.L. Mencken [source])

…and:

The Eye

Said the Eye one day, “I see beyond these valleys a mountain veiled with blue mist. Is it not beautiful?”

The Ear listened, and after listening intently awhile, said, “But where is any mountain? I do not hear it.”

Then the Hand spoke and said, “I am trying in vain to feel it or touch it, and I can find no mountain.”

And the Nose said, “There is no mountain, I cannot smell it.”

Then the Eye turned the other way, and they all began to talk together about the Eye’s strange delusion. And they said, “Something must be the matter with the Eye.”

(Kahlil Gibran [source])

__________

Note: This isn’t an “official” source, but apparently a book generated from a fan site of all the scripts. From the short introduction:

…this is not intended as a replacement for the printed Python scripts, this is only intended as reference material for people wanting to look up a specific sketch, as I so often get emails from people asking about this sketch or that sketch … if you enjoy the Monty Python sketches, please buy the books “All the Words” (or “Just the Words”) volumes 1 and 2, the official script books that inspired this site. Okay?

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