March 11th, 2017

March 11th, 2017


Affirmation: My courage grows as I use it.


Word of the Day: canard (n):

1. a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor.

2. Cookery. A duck intended or used for food.

Locked Out of Life

Again it happens in my sleep.
A core of wakefulness opens.
But I have ways of ignoring that.

You say, How long will you beg from others,
when there are things born of you
that emperors want?

Why waste time in meanness?
Who else can say what you say to me?

If I could repeat it, people passing by
would be enlightened and go free.

You are an ocean in my chest
where everyone changes places,
believer-unbeliever, cynic-lover,
dervish-king.

Last night you came to my sleep
asking, How are you?

Locked out of life, waiting, weeping.

____

Genius

I do not think of a genius as a type of person. Like the ancients, I think of genius as a state or experience that all of us can access (or be visited by) sometimes. And it may take different forms, depending upon who we are and what we're open to.

There's the classic "flash of insight" genius: in a moment of sudden clarity, we uncover a new way. It springs from us, fully formed or at least partially formed. It can be fleeting, like a brilliant musician with exactly one good album. Though it comes in bursts, it's often based upon creating the right environment, lots of discipline or routine.

There's a contemplative sort of genius that listens and ponders. It yields soulful insight into truths and wisdoms in all their complexity. It is constantly flowing, asking better and better questions, uncovering endless depths and nuances. It rarely makes definitive statements and often comes with the awareness of how little can actually be known.

There's an iterative genius, which creates and puts forth that which is forever incomplete. It's always creating, observing, and creating again. It's contemplative genius in public. It's different because it's extroverted, and because ideas often become limited the moment they are written or drawn or sculpted or recorded. It exists in versions, editions, rounds, iterations. For this reason, it may contradict itself. And it inspires. It can create movements. Its fuel is curiosity and passion.

What do you think? Do you recognize yourself as being visited by genius? What kind? Do you think there are other sorts of genius that I'm missing?

Quotes:

Genius is not purity; genius is not piety; yet it partakes of the nature of both. It is contradistinguished from every thing which is earthly, sensual, material. It is the vigour of the soul; the aspirations of a spirit struggling with its fetters, and continually peeping beyond its prison walls of flesh and blood. ~ Anonymous, Aphorisms; or, A Glance at Human Nature, in Original Maxims, 1820

Were a person to collect all the happy thoughts he had ever had in his life, the result would be a valuable book. At least once a year everyone is a genius. It is only that the actual man of genius so-called has his good ideas at shorter intervals. We see, then, how much depends on making a note of everything. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered — either by themselves or by others. ~ Mark Twain