A sesquipedalian collector by nature,
for the gallimaufry of days to come,
Mr Honk chose the simplest vocabulary,
consisting of only two petite words,
so he would always know what to say
at the end.
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Tag: simplicity
Simple living
En réalité le satanisme a gagné. Satan s’est fait ingénu. Le mal se connaissant était moins affreux et plus près de la guérison que le mal s’ignorant. G. Sand inférieure à de Sade.
Notes sur «Les liaisons dangereuses», Charles Baudelaire
My neighbour leads a life of studious regularity
and doesn’t mind if George Sand is inferior to de Sade,
as long as he can perch on the scroll finial of the church across the street
to catch his breath between feedings of his chicks.
If only I were a magpie.
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Envy
I have always been—and still am—convinced that life is an unnecessary hassle to which we are subjected without our explicit consent. But since I dread it so much, one might say that simply ending it seems like a viable solution. The thing is, that would require either a great deal of knowledge or determination—neither of which I have—which shows just how much effort both nature and my fellow inmates put into keeping me in this panopticon. Oh, how I envy the paramecium or, better yet, a pebble on a riverbed.
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Simple life
Charles Travelyan and his wife live in the country. They rise at six.
While Charles is shaving, his wife reads Ibsen aloud to him,
and while she’s doing her hair, he reads Bernard Shaw aloud to her.
They work till twelve, when they have a light vegetarian lunch;
they then walk over ploughed fields till six, when they have a light
vegetarian dinner. After dinner Charles Travelyan reads aloud
for an hour and a half, and at eight they go to bed.
This is supposed to be the simple life, but my private view is
that Charles Travelyan’s one object in doing it is to save money,
as he’s the heir to forty thousand pounds a year.*
And, as then, so now, there is nothing like simple life
with a six million pounds sterling price tag—in today’s currency—
to while away the time in the country.
*Adapted from a letter by Lytton Strachey to Leonard Woolf, dated June 13th, 1905, as found in The Letters of Lytton Strachey, edited by Paul Levy.
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A simple existence
Every now and then I spy on my neighbours—
a humble family of magpies—and I’ve always been struck
by how busy they are with their lives, but perhaps it’s easier
when you face your end after a measly few years.
With a lifespan like that, who would waste time
on meta-existence?
The nocturnals
Some flowers bloom only at night,
so they don’t have to manufacture fine days,
and while sunlight might embellish their lives,
they know that better is the enemy
of good.
Red ants on a strip
When I was a boy, a drawing of red ants
walking along a Möbius strip caught my eye.
I thought their lives must be pretty boring
(not that mine had ever come close to even a clumsily sketched tesseract),
but I never imagined I could envy them, and yet here I was,
faced with the alternative—relentless pestering:
Get out; find someone; live a little!
Hell truly is paved with good intentions.
Finding comfort in the apartment
Nothing beats the hypnotic mechanical movements
of the Friden calculators at Consolidated Life
after a week of testing spiritual resilience with Hallmark Christmas flicks.
And it wasn’t even in Technicolour—although, come to think of it,
that might actually be part of the reason
for its soul-restoring power.
The day I forget how to spell my name
The day I forget how to spell my name will be like a violin playing
a violinist—somewhat unexpected, but not overly dramatic, calm even,
except, I guess, it’s better to embrace the little drama of the present
with backaches and cooking dinner for one while listening to Lisa’s song
played in a loop and leave the whole spelling affair as it comes
to a letter cutter.
hidden pilcrow 