536 Philosophy poems

Was it Pascal who said “Almost all our misery has come from not being able to remain alone in our rooms”? Baudelaire thought it might have been, but was not sure. And let’s take a look at that “almost” which I’m very glad is there. I can think of lots of misery that had nothing to do with my not having been alone in my room. When I get a rejection email on a train for a piece of work I had high hopes for is one example. Or to go way back, when I returned home to find my white mouse dead when I was eleven or twelve. Or to take a mundane example, when a plane I’m booked on is twelve hours delayed, while I hang about the airport. I have never had a huge problem with solitude, it is true. As a child I read voraciously, and would find some hidden corner to lurk with my book. The game of golf is one where one can enjoy being alone, especially very early on a beautiful morning. The time when I most felt alone was when the missionaries came to my school and we all had to endure a silent retreat for three days. At the end of that time 
I felt like one of those astronauts in films who have to stay on the moon for months. Baudelaire claimed his friend the Devil loved bleak, solitary places where the spirit of murder and lust was more likely to ignite. He decided that this was not really a danger for most of us, though, only for those idle, fanciful folk prone to enigmas and dreaming. The type of person who should most avoid being alone is a chatterbox or maybe a television pundit. But what’s to stop these people being verbose in their own company? Did Crusoe, for example, stay quiet on his island before Friday came? According to Elizabeth Bishop in her great poem, “Crusoe in England,” he did not. And in order to write that poem, Ms. Bishop needed to be alone. This did not stop her from cooking meals and inviting friends to help her eat the food and drink wine with her. After this, probably the next morning, she went back to the poem and her solitude. I feel the French maybe exaggerate the benefits of  being alone. That philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre for example, his play Huis-clos with its famous line “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” Yes, we all know how annoying other people often are, and how strong the urge to escape from them can be. But the two characters Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot show that even in an absurdist setting companionship has its importance. It’s said Beckett got his inspiration for this play from one or other of two versions of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon which he saw on a trip to Germany in 1936 or ’37. In both versions of the painting one of the men has his hand on the other man’s shoulder, a sign of companionship if ever there was one. Baudelaire quotes the French philosopher and moralist Jean de la Bruyère (or Delabruyère, as the man signed himself), “What a great misfortune we cannot be alone,” as if to chastise anyone who wants to plunge into a crowd or go into a busy bar. What about the great French word fraternité, the third of the three words that were the rallying cry of the Revolution? I want to close this by giving another quote from de la Bruyère: “Out of difficulties grow miracles.” I prefer this one. Anyone in an awkward social situation should dwell on that.

What if we got outside ourselves and there really was an outside out there, not just our insides turned inside out? What if there really were a you beyond me, not just the waves off my own fire, like those waves off the backyard grill you can see the next yard through, though not well -- just enough to know that off to the right belongs to someone else, not you. What if, when we said I love you, there were a you to love as there is a yard beyond to walk past the grill and get to? To endure the endless walk through the self, knowing through a bond that has no basis (for ourselves are all we know) is altruism: not giving, but coming to know someone is there through the wavy vision of the self's heat, love become a decision.

Philosophic in its complex, ovoid emptiness, a skillful pundit coined it as a sort of stopgap doorstop for those quaint equations Romans never dreamt of. In form completely clever and discrete—a mirror come unsilvered, loose watch face without the works, a hollowed globe from tip to toe unbroken, it evades the grappling hooks of mass, tilts the thin rim of no thing, remains embryonic sum, non-cogito.

I When moiling seems at cease In the vague void of night-time, And heaven's wide roomage stormless Between the dusk and light-time, And fear at last is formless, We call the allurement Peace. II Peace, this hid riot, Change, This revel of quick-cued mumming, This never truly being, This evermore becoming, This spinner's wheel onfleeing Outside perception's range.

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything. The sage is quiet because he is not moved, Not because he wills to be quiet. Still water is like glass. You can look in it and see the bristles on your chin. It is a perfect level; A carpenter could use it. If water is so clear, so level, How much more the spirit of man? The heart of the wise man is tranquil. It is the mirror of heaven and earth The glass of everything. Emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth. This is perfect Tao. Wise men find here Their resting place. Resting, they are empty. From emptiness comes the unconditioned. From this, the conditioned, the individual things. So from the sage’s emptiness, stillness arises: From stillness, action. From action, attainment. From their stillness comes their non-action, which is also action And is, therefore, their attainment. For stillness is joy. Joy is free from care Fruitful in long years. Joy does all things without concern: For emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, Silence, and non-action Are the root of all things.

i think about big questions most often in the car which is inconvenient but consistent what is consciousness what is the point what exit is mine