Objet trouvé: modesty
A great man is always willing to be little. - Ralph Waldo Emerson A modest little person, with much to be modest about. - Winston Churchill I want to stretch out my tentacles to tackle the idea of modesty. Sound the clarions, hoist the flags, this self-proclaimed writer marches in to lecture about a virtue ...
Our language
I overlook the green garden
The wind is almost invisible
A sheep is bleating, nearby
Look at the evolution of
Our language, she is layered
She is a flight
And a hiding place
Some people make it
The green garden doesn't make it
The wind doesn't make it
The sheep doesn't make it
Professor . What do you think of the intellectual climate of today? There is a worrying decline of what I call the culture of wisdom. More often than not, people engaging in debates are more concerned with cementing their own argumentation, making their own narrative waterproof as it were. Instead of trying to integrate the ...
Fietstocht door Nederland Week 2
Fietstocht door Nederland Dag 8 Familiebezoek in Groningen Op de televisie werd toevallig de documentaire De achtste dag uigezonden, over de financiële crisis van tien jaar geleden. Indrukwekkende poriënfotografie van een zilvergrijze Wouter Bos, en mede-acteurs als Wellink, Trichet, Balkenende. Wij werden wakker in een prinsesjeskamer tussen meerdere dunne dekentjes met hier en daar hondenhaar: ...
Reading: Nocturnal Sailing by Mario Wirz
Mario Wirz (1956-2013) was a German poet and writer who started his career as theater actor and director. I read a poem in a translation by Renate Latimer: the wind in your dream swells the curtains into a sail tears asunder all the things we have collected in the fearful light of the bedside lamp ...
Writing is dying elsewhere.
Professor Trompsky #1
Professor Trompsky, welcome to our studio. At 87, do you have any plans for retirement? Listen, the burden of the world rests on my shoulders. I can't just give up because the fragility that is slowly but certainly shutting down my body. My responsibilities are grand, and with grandure I shall go to the grave. Can ...
we burst heartlong through life
we burst heartlong through life before the silence we don't know the probability of a thermonuclear war & other reflections of the mammalian brain ________that rascal! butterfly wings are rife with functionality ________or take phantom limbs we tool like a tool inside a tool & that is confusing too but also wonderful like feeling the ...
Advice for the digital age
I stretch out a finger. On most of the days of our universe, that finger has been and will be no finger, but a loose collection of atoms not involved with one another. And they couldn't care less about being a finger. I point the finger at these characters. On most of the days of our ...
This image got me BANNED from Facebook
Last month I posted the above image as a commentary on a Facebook post. The image is a caricature of a campaign poster in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, on which a veiled Muslim woman and a Jew are kissing in front of the iconic Erasmus bridge. I greatly dislike the puritanical culture that Facebook imposes ...
Review: Spent by Geoffrey Miller
Geoffrey Miller's 2008 book Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior about conspicuous consumption uses the relatively new science of evolutionary psychology to analyse modern humans' consumerist behavior. The bottom line is that we engage in conspicuous consumption to show potential mates, like animals, that we have desirable traits. Through countless examples, some of which are ...
Ronde van Nederland 1
Wanneer u dit leest rijd ik met bepakking en dochter op de fiets door het Brabantse land. Onbekommerd. Milieuvriendelijk. Welgemoed. De komende anderhalve week gaan we ruwweg de ronde rijden die ik op bovenstaande oude kaart heb ingetekend. Daar zou ik deze mededeling bij kunnen laten, ware het niet dat ik van mezelf verwacht dat ...
We breathe calmly. The word purpose agitates. Propos, to 'put forth' says the etymology. We are familiar with a hierarchy of purposes. At the end of a curious child's inquisitive series of "why?" every adult will resort to "just because". The purpose of growing up is to contribute to society. The purpose of society is ...
Meditation on Value
What do we mean when we say of something that it has value? And isn't all our speaking inherently evaluating? Isn't every utterance we make freely, an assignment of value? Isn't it much more elegant if we consider ourselves living in a 'soup' of value, rather than in a generally valueless world, in which we ...
Starlight
last night, ancient starlight fell onto your arm it was billions of years old and had traveled the entire time only to smash into your barren wrinkled skin. there was a team of people who rushed in to help you wonder, and to make sure you understand the grandure, the sheer magnificence of it all. ...
Reading: Sudden Movements by Bob Hicok
Bob Hicok (1960) is a poet from Michigan who writes accessible and meditative poetry. He currently teaches creative writing at Purdue University. My father's head has become a mystery to him. We finally have something in common. When he moves his head his eyes get big as roses filled with the commotion of spring. Not ...
My words that are idiot contracts written to the music of escape.
Partij van de Leuke Oplossingen
Festina lente! staat bij de PLO hoog in het vaandel. Voordat ik mezelf officieel kandidaat stel als lijsttrekker van Neerlands frisse nieuwe partij, de Partij van de Leuke Oplossingen, heb ik er eerst een nachtje over geslapen. Wanneer je in het Nederland van 2018 enig succes wilt boeken met een politieke partij, dan moet de ...
Review: Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
Being Wrong is a well-written account of our understanding of error. The author points out how central error is for all aspects of cultural proress. It is not an academic treatise, but still gives the history of thinking about scientific and religious truth a fair treatment, by mentioning for example St. Augustine's fallor ergo sum, ...
Experiment
It is not because I have conclusive evidence of it, but because I enjoy teaching new things to my daughter Miru, that I believe we should introduce the most basic concepts of science to our children as early as possible. When Miru and I were wondering if the sea could freeze over, I suggested that ...
Meditation on Hope
We sit and pretend we are terminally ill. We breathe calmly. What is hope? What do we make of the bonmot that 'hope dies last' if we are lost in a desert without the prospect of water? And isn't the human condition hopeless 'in the end', if we presuppose a rough understanding of hope as ...