“There are silent conspiracies between people who seem to understand one another without talking, quiet rebellions that take place in the world every minute without being noticed; groups form by chance, unplanned reunions in the middle of the park or on a dark corner, occasionally allowing us to be optimistic about the future of humanity. They join together for a few minutes and then go their separate ways, all enlisting in the hidden fight against moral misery. One day, they will rise up with unheard-of fury and blow everything to bits.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)
“When all is said and done, life is governed by all sorts of misunderstandings.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)
“Contrary to what so many believe, no one writes to entertain, although literature might be one of the most entertaining things around; no one writes to ‘tell stories,’ although literature is full of brilliant tales. No, one writes to take the reader captive, to possess, seduce, subjugate, to enter into the spirit of another and stay there, to touch, to win the reader’s heart . . .” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)(emphasis in original)(ellipsis in original)
“Nothing dies of too much love.” – Paul Simon, “The Lord (Part 1)”
“Every story leads to another story, which in turn leads to another story, and so on to infinity.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)
“The whole of your life you get only so much of a sky as you can, in the splinter of the moment, smuggle, but then you get a moment, and the whole of heaven is the tip of a twister and it’s you, you’re the twister, you got the power.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“You think the body belongs to you, that it will always bend to your will, that with a simple word, size of a mustard seed, you can deploy the finger to find the itch, or—way off yonder there at the far end of the territory—set the toes to tapping or legs to running or, someday all of a sudden, cast that whole mountain of flesh into the sea. But then you find it don’t belong to you, the body, not really, not when the fear settles and the bone in the socket locks. The heart booms. The body wobbles. The—out the lungs it goes, that last little bit of sky.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“To live in a world of stones and bones and flesh and blood, you gotta touch and taste and smell, you gotta gather up the flavor of the day.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“Where the sea and the land collide they call it the line of the coast, the coastline, as if a line is what it is and not a wreck in the making, a blur where the water breaks and the earth buckles and the spray of the salt obliterates the hand that holds the map. Nobody knows nothing.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother: and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.” – Zechariah, ch.7, vv. 9-10
“Their father had been a learned man, an author; he died, of course, in poverty, but he had managed before he died to give his children an excellent education; he left a lot of books too.” – Ivan S. Turgenev, “The Country Doctor”
“I believed then, as most conceited young people do, that a strong rational argument will carry the day if sufficiently well supported by substantiated facts. This, of course, is nonsense. Once a group of powerful people have made up their minds on something, it develops a life and momentum of its own that is almost impervious to reason or argument. This is particularly true when personal ambition and bravado are involved. In this case even an appeal to fear of ridicule and historical condemnation would not have worked. The decision had been taken at the highest level, and a vast military machine had been set in motion. The opinions of a young intelligence officer were not going to stop it.” – Brian Urquhart, “The Last Disaster of the War” [regarding the fiasco of Operation Market-Garden in the Second World War]
“I don’t think I want to get notified about Armageddon through an email. That would not be my preferred notification.” – Robert J. Contee, III, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Chief, Select Committee Testimony Transcript, January 11, 2022
“If you have been in a fight for 5 minutes, it is a long time.” – Robert J. Contee, III, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Chief, Select Committee Testimony Transcript, January 11, 2022
“In all human beings, if only understanding be brought to the business, dignity will be found, and that dignity cannot fail to reveal itself, soon or late, in the words and phrases with which they make known their high hopes and aspirations and cry out against the intolerable meaninglessness of life.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
“I think if you sit around waiting for something like inspiration to happen, you could just spend your lifetime sitting there. I think you get excited by actually doing it, you get excited by painting, you get excited by the possibilities of it.” – Richard Butler, a self-described “painter who sings,” His Majesty of Modesty: Richard Butler
“With the change in the type and tactics of a new and different enemy, we have evolved in the direction of total surveillance, unmanned warfare, stand-off weapons, surgical strikes, cyber operations and clandestine operations by elite forces whose battlefield is global.” – Robert H. Latiff, Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield
“The retina is, in fact, the brain: in the development of the embryo, a piece of the brain comes out in front, and long fibers grow back, connecting the eyes to the brain. The retina is organized in just the way the brain is organized and, as someone has beautifully put it, ‘The brain has developed a way to look out upon the world.’ The eye is a piece of brain that is touching light, so to speak, on the outside.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I
“It was announced by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance on March 30, 1918, that there were then 15,000 Millers in the United States Army. On the same day there were 262 John J. O’Briens, of whom 50 had wives named Mary.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language (emphases in original)
“People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it—everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life.” – Bob Dylan (interviewed by Robert Love in “Bob Dylan His Way,” 2015)
“Talent is one thing, but getting up in the morning and putting on your boots and doing something about it is another.” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“Don’t we just love the unusual when it’s good?” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“Somebody might study debate for five years in the university. That’s fine, but I’ve studied how to get along with people and how to get things done, in those five years. What would you call that? Is there a department that teaches cooperation, productivity, agreement, working together in such a way that you get to a better place collectively? These are the big lessons for me.” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“Imagine life without the ‘Undo’ button.” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“English, even in its most formal shapes, is chiefly taught by those who cannot write it decently and who get no aid from those who can.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
“The pedant is eternally convinced that pigeon-holing and relabelling are contributions to knowledge.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
Welcome to Bicycling!Welcome to Bicycling!
racing bike, front wheel—
pavement discrepancy—welts,
bruises, spitting teeth.
(Published in Weekly Alibi, Vol. 9, No. 37, Sep. 14-20, 2000. Copyright 2000, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
Habilis (for RK)Habilis (for RK)
If I could paint
the most necessary painting
a portrait setting
the Dutch Masters to shame
it would be you
If I could have my fingers play
in perfect rhythms and changes across
the strings and frets
a pure and balanced melody
it would be you
If I could make my
feet to move
and carry me across the floor
with grace and sureness in the dance
it would be you
But I fingerpaint
play the kazoo
and crawl everywhere I go
And there’s no making of mine
that will make you mine
and no more need be said.
(Published in Weekly Alibi, Vol. 9, No. 6, Feb. 10-16, 2000. Copyright 2000, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.” – Richard P. Feynman’s last words, as reported by Alan Lightman in “The One and Only”
Personals: I Saw UPersonals: I Saw U
You:
Sitting in the sun,
smoking, doing
the crossword puzzle
on your lap.
Me:
Stumbling by,
unwashed and hungover,
passing rancid gas.
Luckily, downwind.
(Published in Weekly Alibi, Vol. 8, No. 6, Feb. 11-17, 1999. Copyright 1999, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)