What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. . . . And men crowd about the poet and say to him, “Sing for us again;” that is as much to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be formed as before; for the cries would only frighten us but the music is delicious.”
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
— Aristotle
My hosannahs have all be forged in the crucible of doubt.
People say be present, to live in the moment.
Thanks, but I want to live in the future.
In the moment, I want the second half of that pastrami sandwich.
Two hours into the future, with my belly feeling beyond full, I can’t figure out what the hell I was thinking.
You know I’ve always been a dreamer
(spent my life running ’round)
And it’s so hard to change
(Can’t seem to settle down)
But the dreams I’ve seen lately
Keep on turning out and burning out
And turning out the same
So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit one more time
From Take It To The Limit
I had the good fortune of seeing The Eagles in concert on Friday night on their History of the Eagles tour. Nostalgia ruled the night. Everyone from the original band was was there, and everyone was a few years older than their prime days in the late ’70s. But the music was a s good as it ever was (which is to say, ‘good but not great’). Joe Walsh, however, brought the house down with great stage energy and fantastics renditions of Rocky Mountain High, and Life’s Been Good.
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
— Goethe
Goethe lived from 1749 to 1832. In the two centuries since his death I am please to report that the planet has made great strides in mental health. At the dawn of the 21st century we have managed to confine the majority of our disordered minds to the executive suites and the board rooms of our largest corporations. A small consolation to the millions of us who must work in these corporations but progress nonetheless.
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
— Mark Twain