Flying Words

...with debates raging on about commercialism, body image, and what should and shouldn't be termed “yoga,”* I’m pleased to announce the impending publication of my new translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras...

...re-titled, for the sake of commercial viability, Patanjali's 196 Secrets for Tight Buns and Rock Hard Abs...

...to be followed, early next year, by my interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita...in which Krishna counsels Arjuna on how to use the Law of Attraction™ to lose dhoti fat, meet attractive virgins of appropriate caste, and avoid paying taxes...

Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour.
Oscar Wilde

...the longest word in the world is 189,819 letters long.....technically, it’s a chemical formula...it’s not in any dictionaries...and, I would guess, it’s very rarely been written...and, quite possibly never spoken at all...or used in a sentence...almost definitely never used in Scrabble...in fact, after a good bit of google searching, finding only abbreviated versions, I started wondering if it existed only in theory......until I found it here...(at the bottom is a recording of part of it read aloud...sped up...but, apparently, the work of a speech synthesizer...leaving open the question of whether it’s been spoken by a human voice)...I’d like to be the first person to use it in a poem...

…frameworks of the One (derived from mysticism) and the Many (derived from common experience) falsely polarize individuation and merging, which are actually embedded in each other…
Diana Alstad

...might silliness and seriousness be a false dichotomy as well?...isn’t everything we see or do to some extent vitally important and to some other extent ridiculous?...isn’t it all just a matter of degree...or perspective......or could it be that I just ain’t smart enough for none o’ them non-dichotomous paradoxes?...

*see here and here and here...

Words, Words, Nothin' But Words...

Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject.
Michael Pollan

...a strange collection of self-defeating words, often expressed by students of writing, as well as some bloggers, is I’m not a writer...which is absurd...particularly if expressed in written form, or in reference to something one has written...since, by definition a writer=one who writes...

...and, contrary to popular romanticism, everybody has to work at it...

...T. S. Eliot told aspiring poet Stephen Spender I can understand you wanting to write poems but I don't quite know what you mean by 'being a poet'...because he knew the high-falutin’ identity of the poet was a conceit...kind of like being a yogi...

...you write poems or you don’t...you practice yoga or you don’t...though, of course, the ways in which we define poetry or yoga may vary widely...which is kinda true of words in general...

...have long been an expert bullshitter, enjoy trash-talking before, during, and after Scrabble games, and would rather tell an amusing tall tale than a boring but factually accurate account...and, in all honesty, believe there’s a meaningful difference between all of the above and dishonesty...

...Seeing Eye Chick...not her real name, but that’s okay...was kind and generous enough to pass on the Honest Weblog Award...which is greatly appreciated...even if it makes me feel a bit self-conscious...



...that Pretenders song starts such a drag to want something sometimes...which, I think, is about as honest as anything you’re likely to hear...might even say it encapsulates the first two of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths in seven short words...but I’m not even quoting the lyric correctly...the last word is actually sometime...no s...which doesn’t make sense...grammatically, at least...then, much of the time, neither does the truth...