Excellent, Richard. Kierkegaard! Nietzsche! Cioran! Polt! The aphoristic tradition needs a new champion.
But which typewriter did you write them with, and do you think your maxims change depending on which machine you use? (Could you, for instance, have pounded them out on your Woodstock Electrite?) And if the aphorisms mutate depending on the tool you use, how about a more mystical thought: is the machine part of your thought process, and, thus, part of your brain?
Rob
P.S. I would offer a friendly augmentation to the last line of the last aphorism, to bring it in line with pure post-Nietzschean despair: "All your successes are too small to define you."
rn: I must confess these were written by hand originally, as parts of journal entries over the last year. I did tweak them a little when typing them on my Royal KMM, and they could all use further revision for elegance and precision. I like your suggestion.
The last aphorism isn't meant to express despair. Any life-defining possibility is too great to be exhausted in a lifetime, so we will necessarily fail -- but there can be very fine ways of failing.
I take your point about despair, Richard. I've always found an ecstasy in failure. Not in failing. But in the understanding that we fail all our lives, little by little, until, ultimately, we fail altogether. All that failure (aka life) is kind of beautiful. As I once wrote in one of my notebooks (and later honed on my Noiseless 7 and transcribed to computer): 'The wrong note makes its own music.'
a touch of zen to that homecoming one...
ReplyDeleteHmm, my former self couldn't aphorize his way out of a paper bag.
ReplyDeleteI like the last one as you do know more about oneself through failure.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, Richard. Kierkegaard! Nietzsche! Cioran! Polt! The aphoristic tradition needs a new champion.
ReplyDeleteBut which typewriter did you write them with, and do you think your maxims change depending on which machine you use? (Could you, for instance, have pounded them out on your Woodstock Electrite?) And if the aphorisms mutate depending on the tool you use, how about a more mystical thought: is the machine part of your thought process, and, thus, part of your brain?
Rob
P.S. I would offer a friendly augmentation to the last line of the last aphorism, to bring it in line with pure post-Nietzschean despair: "All your successes are too small to define you."
rn: I must confess these were written by hand originally, as parts of journal entries over the last year. I did tweak them a little when typing them on my Royal KMM, and they could all use further revision for elegance and precision. I like your suggestion.
ReplyDeleteThe last aphorism isn't meant to express despair. Any life-defining possibility is too great to be exhausted in a lifetime, so we will necessarily fail -- but there can be very fine ways of failing.
I take your point about despair, Richard. I've always found an ecstasy in failure. Not in failing. But in the understanding that we fail all our lives, little by little, until, ultimately, we fail altogether. All that failure (aka life) is kind of beautiful. As I once wrote in one of my notebooks (and later honed on my Noiseless 7 and transcribed to computer): 'The wrong note makes its own music.'
ReplyDeleteRob