I like mornings
of overcast skies
when the excess sunlight
doesn’t hinder reading
by the window
of the Château de Silling—
a blushing quinquagenarian
falling victim to a hassle
most people call life.
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The forgotten question
Looking at the painting by an unknown artist
that he had once bought at a flea market,
Mr Honk tried to understand why
the painter titled it The Square Root of Two,
even though it was clearly a Klauber triangle.
But then it reminded him of John’s opening line,
which, stripped of the divine references,
always made him ask,
‘How many oceans hold a tear?’,
knowing we had spent so long searching for the answer—
we had forgotten what the question was.
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A song
What is it that keeps me attached
to the words? I live and learn
that Nature knows no sorrow—
maybe I shouldn’t either—
and has no use of ‘assuage’.
Perhaps the well-spoken have it easier,
but how would I know? After all, longing
is a wordless song.
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Personal velocity
You said the living should not envy
the dead, and yet here we are, wondering
how many tomorrows today is worth,
trying to find comfort in the torment
or watching Grosse Pointe Blank together
because there’s always time to be
disappointed or ask what life in progress is.
But what if all that were nothing
but splitting hairs, only to realise
there was no hair to split to begin with?
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The language of power
Why does man form the root of both human and woman in English? In Polish, by contrast, the words for a man, a human, and a woman—mężczyzna, człowiek, and kobieta—are three entirely separate terms. What’s more, man in English denotes not only a male individual but also a person in general and even humanity itself, depending on context. It becomes specifically male only when marked by an article. Doesn’t that reinforce patriarchy?
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Growing up
[…] for first, children and all other animals share in voluntary action but not in Moral Choice;
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
If it weren’t for the distractions
we used to preoccupy our dishevelled pates,
we all would eventually come to the conclusion
that life is a pointless exercise not worth the hassle
and simply end it. After all, even a horse
in a gown and a mortarboard, pulling a load
of beliefs, conjectures, hypotheses and theories—
as fallible as they come—must one day join
the grownups in a leaden paradise,
inventing yet another version
of the hourglass.
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Genean Ethics
But when actions are done, either from fear of greater evils, or from some honourable motive, as, for instance, if you were ordered to commit some base act by a despot who had your parents or children in his power, and they were to be saved upon your compliance or die upon your refusal, in such cases there is room for a question whether the actions are voluntary or involuntary.
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, translation by D. P. Chase
Reading the above quote from the Nicomachean Ethics, one might think that family is a matter of genes—or blood, as it would have been conceived in those times—since the wife is not even mentioned there, as if she were not considered worth saving, like a mere growth on the body of the family. Would it be a coincidence or something symptomatic?
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The chicken or the egg
Reading books on philosophy versus reading philosophy books: for one not at home with the latter, the former can feel like eavesdropping on a conversation already in progress, while delving into the latter without first engaging with the former is like trying to face 4’33” with nothing but the score—a classic ‘chicken or the egg’ dilemma, so to speak—and yet all one has to do is to reach for the Republic and the Socratic dialogues rather than Phenomenology of Spirit or Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus if one wishes to start with the latter, and in the case of the former, Russell’s History of Western Philosophy makes a sound starting point. But to find this out, one either needs a stroke of luck or a good mentor.
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The revelation of a dim mind
I have always believed that boredom is a symptom of the laziness of the mind, for brilliant minds are self-sufficient, as seen in the case of Richard Feynman, who remained lucid, mentally active, and undisturbed even by the absence of sensory input in John C. Lilly’s isolation tank. And although I’m far from that level of acumen myself, I’ve often quipped that I’m never bored because I share my time with a very intelligent person—myself. Besides, I tend to keep books close at hand. (And speaking of books and great minds, I’ve long found it fascinating when intellectuals claim that a particular book changed their life—only to then have a flash of insight: nothing like that has ever happened to me, so either I’m not easily impressed, or I’m simply too dim to grasp what I read.)
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 