Mon post

Mon.

As a kid, I never liked books. So how did I end up as a human who has books on his coffee table? Right in front of me, I have one two three four five six… twelve books total, sitting here. I won’t list their titles, because I don’t want to.

What do I get from reading a book? Pleasure for the moment, or ideas of my own? Who cares? I think that parents want their small children to read books; but, once their children get older, it doesn’t matter anymore.

I guess that, once upon a time, kids took switchblades to fights. Now some carry firearms. I wonder what they used before knives—maybe they swung a tree branch as a weapon… or they used their bare fists, or the teeth of their face.

Imagine the most famous scene of a battle—the most important battle that you can imagine—imagine the scene that “won the war.” Now think what it must mean to hear from an historian that this all-important battle actually didn’t mean a thing; that, in fact, some haphazard and unrelated event brought the war to an end.

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will—

Those are Hamlet’s words, from the famous play by Shakespeare (Act 5, Scene 2). I can’t wait for the age to occur whose inhabitants can say: finally Hamlet is behind us, no longer up ahead waiting for us somewhere!

That last clause, which I attributed to futurity’s assessment of the Dane’s influence, was taken from the end of “Song of Myself,” a poem by Walt Whitman (I explain this reference, although I assume it is obvious, because I fear that, in days to come, only the happy few will know about poetry, and my audience is the multitude—that’s also why I no longer teach in parables)—here are the final two lines of Whitman’s poem:

Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

But what if you were a movie star with gorgeous blonde hair? What if you were a prophet living in the wilderness and dining on locusts?

A part of me wishes that Jesus had defended himself in the ancient court and arose to overthrow Rome. …Also, now that all of this time has passed, I wonder if God has ever paid attention to any of the U.S. presidential elections.

Fairness. Goodness. Family. Righteousness. Predestination.

There is a green sign at our neighborhood park that says “Please clean up after your pet.” I assume that some people read this sign and obey it, while others ignore it.

I am enduring with patience the snowy, cold part of the year. It is February as I write this. I live in Minnesota. My zodiac sign is Pisces.