halfknot

I'm a big fan of wise quotations. Today, as I was reading and altering a quotation, I was thinking about why I like them so much and realized that it's their pungency and subtext. Follow me a sec... I used to be an avid Go player and student, and still play occasionally. Battles between two masters can sometimes appear simpler than they actually are. I've always liked the analogy that the moves on the board are only the tip of the iceberg that peaks out above the waves, but the bulk of the true game lies submerged beneath the water, the multitude of possibilities that flow through the masters minds. In fact, I wrote a haiku about it once:

Stones on the surface
above a vast, unseen sea.
Each move hides fathoms.

I realized that this is what quotations represent for me. The great ones have a natural implication of a vast amount of wisdom and experience that is culminating in an idea stated in just a few sentences. For example, here's one I read today:

When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death.
- Tom Robbins

I don't think everyone would find this quote as particularly affecting, but this one sentence seemed to sum up the last four years of my life pretty well. Not only that, but it serves as a helpful insight in order to contain those 4 years in a different box so that I can manipulate it and see it from a different perspective. I love life, and in fact try to make love to it, in a sense, yet still I realized that I had developed a sort of resentment towards it as well, a love-hate relationship, possibly aided by the fact that it filled the void left by my ability to pretty successfully move past the fear of death. Finding the right words for the right reasons is the only way to really address a problem, and quotations can be a very succint, graspable way of doing so. Without the help of exact words defining exact meaning, it is practically impossible to do anything other than carry a formless oppression.

Just a point of interest, many principles of Go strategy are passed on as single sentence proverbs which can be as direct as "The strong player plays straight, the weak plays diagonally," or more colorful like "Don't go fishing when your house is on fire." Also, here's the other quote that I read today that I liked and expanded upon:

A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
- Lee Segall

A man with one watch knows what time it is, but may be wrong; a man with two watches is never quite sure, and will never be right.

Since I was pretty much stuck inside all weekend, I made some other improvements: I baked for the first time. I found a recipe for bran muffins and turned them into tropical bran muffins (the hoodies say they're the bomb). I also made zuchinni bread that I turned into zuchinni/carrot cake. Also good, but I like the muffins better. I don't know why, but I felt like doing something utilitarian and unmasculine.

Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained.
- Maurice de Vlaminck