flahute » knowledge

Poetry Friday

flahute — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:38:54 +0000

THE ARMY OF TRUTH

Words? Those sounds the world despises.
Words in poems?
Even more to be disdained!
Ah, how feeble are your powers
to defend
all the truth that man denies!

Thunder crack and lightning flash
      at its presence!
Hosts of angels should come swooping
down from heaven to the rescue
      far and wide
spread the knowledge of its glory.

Oh, why can it not come winging
      from on high?
Truth, that with a starry birth
wears a helmet brightly gleaming
      wielding swords
fiercely sharp instead of feathers.

Oh, why then does it not pitch camp
      tent on tent
white on every mountainside?
Oh, why then are not its heroes
      strongly ranged
to keep mastery over life?

The fort of darkness is well guarded.
      Superstition
rests secure on stony columns.
Numerous as Egypt’s serpents
      round truth’s temple
range the black-clad guards of error.

Forward, though, you feeble lines!
      Words are armies!
On this earth your victory
was promised by the Lord, Light’s father,
      when you serve
Truth itself, his child, alone.

Onward, words, you sons of truth!
      En avant!
In the end the hearts of men
will be your victorious home.
      Then your light
will with courage bear them on.

Forward, with your boldest faces
      Words of truth!
For the greatest power on Earth
has been granted you by God:
      Because never
Could you die in Truth’s pure mouth!

Courage take then, all you small ones!
Truth’s great cause
Only triumphs in defeat.
Storm the bitter heights of lies!
Raze them to the ground with Truth!

— Henrik Wergeland (1808 – 1845)

Poetry Friday

flahute — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:25:29 +0000

FINAL SOLILOQUY OF THE INTERIOR PARAMOUR

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

ANECDOTE OF THE JAR

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

— Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955), American Modernist poet

Awkward words

flahute — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:27:31 +0000

Anyone who knows me well knows not only that I have a fascination with words, but also love to debate … I can argue semantics for hours, much to the dismay of people around me at times.

I’m pretty sure that’s why a friend of mine gave me a book this past summer; because I was driving her crazy with my insistence on using the right words … but I wonder if she knows how much I’m actually enjoying reading it?

Sol Steinmetz’s Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, published by Random House, “shines a light on the often complex evolution of the meaning of words” according to Jesse Sheidlower, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

For example:

AWKWARD

Before 1400 there was a word in English, awk, meaning “the wrong way, backhanded,” that was of Scandinavian origin, probably old Norse afug. Though the word had fallen out of use in English by the 1600s, it survived as part of the compound word awkward, meaning “turned in the wrong direction, upside down,” literally, “toward the wrong way.” From the idea of doing things the wrong way, a new meaning, “ungraceful, uncouth,” developed, as in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1616), where Ulysses says: “And with ridiculous and awkward action … He pageants us.” From this sense came the current meaning, “lacking dexterity, clumsy, bumbling,” applied to persons and things, as in an awkward gesture, an awkward situation. “I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people.” (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels)

Of course, when I whip out this newfound knowledge, people look at me like I’m crazy … which leaves me feeling, well, awkward.

Oh well, what’s a guy to do?

Social cyclists

flahute — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:50:09 +0000

Josh Kadis, over at Kadisco, has two recent posts on how social media outlets like Twitter are affecting the connection between the professional cyclist and the everyday fan. For those who don’t know Josh, he is a marketing and sponsorship consultant, who has worked with clients like SRAM, and with teams like Kodak Gallery/Sierra Nevada.

A couple snips from each posting:

Kadisco: Twitter and pro cycling’s human element (27 Feb 2009)

… in this country, professionals can actually relate pretty well to the enthusiast cyclist. For starters, they share a socioeconomic background, and only a select few riders are more than a tax bracket away from their well-heeled US fan base. The pros face the same dangers on the same roads as anyone else who rides a bike. They understand that we understand what it’s like to push oneself on the bike and be exhausted afterwards, even if we’re moving 15km/h slower.

… More than any other pro sport, cycling has taken to Twitter like a fish to water. I believe it’s because the approachability of the tweet fits with the already approachable nature of the sport. As Twitter and other social tools permeate our everyday lives, myths will become human and a pre-humanized sport like cycling will adapt more quickly and naturally than its larger counterparts.

More recently:

Kadisco: More on bikes and social media (7 April 2009)

When I was 15, I saved most of my summer earnings at Harris Cyclery to buy a set of Spinergy Rev-X race wheels. I knew those were the wheels for me, but I had no idea what tires to use. I asked the head mechanic at the shop – a fellow by the name of Sheldon Brown – and he expressed a strong preference for Clement Criteriums. So that’s what I got. …

… Expanding on the idea of “tribal knowledge,” I’d add that many of us experience cycling almost as a set of secrets passed from person to person. It’s a culture based on one person teaching another, which makes it a perfect application for tools that simply amplify the reach of interactions like the ones I used to have with Sheldon Brown. Not every cyclist can receive personal advice from probably the most famous bicycle mechanic in history, but through social media every cyclist can share experiences with Levi Leipheimer, DL Byron, and everyone else who rides a bike.

I know exactly what Josh is writing about … I’ve been geeking around the Internet, especially on cycling forums for a long time. I’ve found posts of mine on the Usenet newsgroup rec.bicycles.racing dating back to January 1994, and I’m pretty sure I was reading it even before that. Much of what I learned about the history and sport cycling was through RBR, reading Sheldon Brown’s postings on rec.bicycles.tech, and reading every book and magazine about cycling I could get my hands on.

But even with all of that, over time the love of a sport drifts away along with one’s fitness; it’s hard to maintain that passion forever, which is one of the things really impresses me about the pros … their sheer dedication and drive.

But lately, being able to forge connections with people through social media outlets is reigniting a love of the sport that has fallen into disrepair over the past few years; whether through reading riders’ blogs or tweets, those of professionals like Burke Swindlehurst and Dave Zabriskie or the enthusiastic amateurs on just about every cycling-oriented blog on the interwebs, I feel that the cycling community is becoming even more tightly knit than it has already been.

And I really dig that some of these same riders follow me as well … we’re all part of the same tribe. And, it’s a definitely a bit of an ego boost knowing that at least one big name local rider knew who I was before I ever actually met him. All I need to do now is raid his music collection … and perhaps someday I’ll be able to keep up well enough to ride with him on one of his easy off-season days.

Poetry Friday

flahute — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:20:16 +0000

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THE END OF SOLITUDE, BEGINNING AGAIN:

A painter, thin with auburn hair, works before an easel
While looking coldly into a meadow, her free hand
Raises the red gauze of her dress then scratches the pink
Spider bite that’s high up where her leg emerges
From the charcoal shadow of her draping buttock muscles—

She’ll do the meadow over tomorrow
With even more ghostly silica orbs of dandelions, adding the red spouting
Indian-pipe and tacit buttercups;
Water wells up in the painter’s mouth and she swallows it …

Earlier in the morning, with a similar unconscious gesture,
You skimmed cream off a saucer of bread in milk, the cream
Was like petals of a buttercup
Caught in a wooden spoon, these mustard-colored flowers are shyly

Acquired by the canvas, and with that exact, same gesture
Of skimming milk …

The painter’s black dog jumped up out of the meadow,
His jaws snapping at the air-borne seeds of the wandering dandelion—
Each seed is a fading cipher

Like the invincible, numinous finger of a Balinese dancer …

This is the day of your death, a limousine is entering a cemetery
Beyond the meadow, there are rolling lawns landscaped with pine
And cypress,

And the dead are like the nude with small breasts who poses
For students, she has knowledge of the difficult, imperceptible
Rehearsals of weight that make you steady as statuary; adjustments
Of weight, the penciled-in lines of your legs, in relationship

To your hips, which the students will justify by inches
using the very last crumbs of their erasers!
And the large flapping sheets of paper are pinned by their elbows, as
One sketch after another is wasted, torn away and tossed up into the air
Of this cold room with its big sweeping mirrors, the nude with auburn hair
Has a white vaccination on her thigh beside a fresh spider bite, the instructor
Touches a clear cube of ice to the bite while he apologizes …
she steps back into her black robe, looks
Above herself to the silk hammocks of speckled brown spiders, what she observes
Is the first principle of weight in suspension

which separates the heavy cream while lifting

It to the surface, then skimming
The meadow like a breeze that carries you and the dandelion seeds into
The solitude of a next season, where the limp

Long greens of dandelions boil through a steamy summer evening …

— Norman Dubie (b. 1945), American poet

Poetry Friday

flahute — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:32:46 +0000

NOT IDEAS ABOUT THE THING BUT THE THING ITSELF

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry at daylight or before,
In the early March wind

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose C preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

— Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955), American Modernist poet

Poetry Friday

flahute — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:39:54 +0000

MONUMENT

To exist; to be among things.
The art of nerve ends, masseur art
Of the blind skin

Or the five
Senses gone
To the one sense, to well being

Lacks significance.
Or lacks life. The thing
By which the mind
Sees!——if it wake——

The wooden sills, the grimed past
Above the store fronts and the signs, the black

Telephone pole of the past sunned warm
As the tree’s bulk, or the squirrel’s

Eyes, whose substance, solid ounce, whose life
Bursts furious thru the leaves

And down town,
The absurd stone trimming of the building tops
Rectangular in dawn, the shopper’s
Thin morning monument.

THE THEOLOGICAL QUESTION

Thus desire
Becomes knowledge

Whether one loves
The world or loves
Shelter
From it

Is decisive, amnesiac children,
The dance of the death

— George Oppen (1908 – 1984), American poet

World AIDS Day

flahute — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:10:07 +0000

From the World AIDS Campaign:

2008 marks the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. Since 1988, the face and response to AIDS has greatly changed. While many of these changes are positive, this anniversary offers us an opportunity to highlight how much more still needs to be done.

For example:

Leaders in most countries from around the world now acknowledge the threat of AIDS, and many have committed to do something about it. As of 2007, nearly all countries have national policies on HIV. However, despite these policies, most have not been fully implemented and many lack funding allocations.
While treatment for HIV and AIDS has improved and become more widespread since 1988, many still do not have access to it – in 2007 only 31% of those in low- to middle-income countries who need treatment received it.
Despite HIV awareness now reaching nearly all areas of the globe, infection rates are still happening 2.7 times faster than the increase in number of people receiving treatment.
While the number of countries protecting people living with HIV continue to increase, one third of countries still lack legal protections and stigma and discrimination continues to be a major threat to universal access.
More broadly, real action on HIV and AIDS and human rights remains lacking. Legal barriers to HIV services still exist for groups such as women, adolescents, sex workers, people who use drugs, and men having sex with men, and programmatic responses promoting HIV-related human rights have yet to be prioritised.

World AIDS Day began in 1988 when health ministers from around the world met and agreed on the concept of the day as an opportunity for all of us to come together to demonstrate the importance of AIDS and show solidarity for the cause. In 2008, this underlining principle of solidarity and awareness remains the same.

We have only two years to go for “the goal of universal access to comprehensive prevention programmes, treatment, care and support by 2010”[1].”

To achieve this goal, leadership and action is needed now. Governments must deliver on the promises they have made. Communities must encourage leadership of its members. Individuals must feel empowered to access treatment, to know their rights and take action against stigma and discrimination, and to know and use methods of prevention against receiving and transmitting HIV.

Now, more than ever is the time to lead – empower – deliver.

Quote of the Day

flahute — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:52:54 +0000

THE BRIDGE OF COMPASSION

Compassion becomes a bridge to the world outside. Trust and compassion for oneself bring inspiration to dance with life, to communicate with the energies of the world. Lacking this kind of inspiration and openness, the spiritual path becomes the samsaric path of desire. One remains trapped in the desire to improve oneself, the desire to achieve imagined goals … Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people, because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy. They recharge your energy, because in the process of relating with them, you acknowledge your wealth, your richness. So if you have difficult tasks to perform, such as dealing with people or life situations, you do not feel you are running out of resources. Each time you are faced with a difficult task, it presents itself as a delightful opportunity to demonstrate your richness, your wealth. There is no feeling of poverty at all in this approach to life.

From “The Open Way,” in CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, pages 98 to 99.

— Chögyam Trungpa (1939 – 1987), Tibetan Buddhist teacher.

Blue blood and white shoes …

flahute — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:21:13 +0000

I have a lot of pride in the company that I work for, even though I sometimes get really frustrated by my job.

And of course, being the obsessive sort that I am, I have to learn everything I can about the history of my firm … which means that even though I lived it (well, as much as any low-level employee can), I had to pick up a copy of Patricia Beard’s Blue Blood & Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley, which details the 2005 ouster of Phil Purcell as Chairman and CEO, and John Mack’s triumphant return to the company he helped create by co-orchestrating the merger between Morgan Stanley (of which he was president at the time) and Purcell’s Dean Witter Discover.

But to understand any of this, it’s best to get a deeper knowledge of the culture of the firm by reading Ron Chernow’s The House of Morgan and Jean Strouse’s Morgan: American Financier.