[Image: “The Observer’s Paradox,” by Zach Stern (found on Flicker, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!). This photo seems to have been taken at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, during a 2012 exhibit called “Fifteen Pairs of Hands,” by Bruce Nauman. The same sign probably appears on many walls in the museum, and has nothing to do with this exhibit, per se — but the photographer has picked up on the inherent mystery of a hands-off injunction in a room whose contents all appear to defy it. If I’d been the photographer, I’d have been very pleased with myself!]
From whiskey river:
Purring
The internet says science is not sure
how cats purr, probably
a vibration of the whole larynx,
unlike what we do when we talk.Less likely, a blood vessel
moving across the chest wall.As a child I tried to make every cat I met
purr. That was one of the early miracles,
the stroking to perfection.Here is something I have never heard:
a feline purrs in two conditions,
when deeply content and when
mortally wounded, to calm themselves,
readying for the death-opening.The low frequency evidently helps
to strengthen bones and heal
damaged organs.Say poetry is a human purr,
vessel mooring in the chest,
a closed-mouthed refuge, the feel
of a glide through dying.One winter morning on a sunny chair,
inside this only body,
a far-off inboard motorboat
sings the empty room, urrrrrrrhhhh
urrrrrrrhhhhh
urrrrrrrhhhh
(Coleman Barks [source])
…and:
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.
It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.
(Richard Feynman [source])
…and:
If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I’d have to say he can’t do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.
(William S. Burroughs [source])
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