Aphoristic morning

Makoto Fujimura's Dark Shalom, 2012

This morning I feel like bundling all my thoughts into tiny packages--perhaps I shall place them under a metaphysical tree, and hope they are not simply waste of breath! Aphorism too often becomes Polonial, and adds nothing to the accumulated thoughts of the world. Perhaps it is now impossible to add an aphorism that has not been conveyed already in other words.

I don't try in words to be better than some other writer; I try to be better than I am, to increase what is me. 

Surely it is just as sad to achieve only the expected and conventional--that thing we too often like because it is comfortable--as to do nothing with a gift in the realms of art. 

Poems without joy in sound are dead leaves that will never dance in the wind. 

The problem with much criticism of the novel and poetry in the past century is that it attempted to replace art, not realizing that art is an experience that cannot be replaced. 

Each of us is a secret that cannot be revealed; the portrayal of character in its ideal gives a sense of person and mystery. 

An artist of any sort needs the understanding of what he or she can do, joined with a yearning desire to topple over that boundary--and the next, and the next. 

After hearing many words in various orders read by many poets, I found myself longing for mystery.  

The element most often missing in our arts is the sense of abundant life. 

Even a ruined shack is a chamber of mystery if people have lived and died there.

Well, that was an interesting exercise. Evidently I find mystery to be more important than any other element this morning...