Kennst du die Sängerin mit Stimme klar und rein

I saw a classical recital this afternoon, which I rather enjoyed.
It prompted me to pen a short poem, in the style and language of an untitled poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book III, Chapter 1, but sometimes referred to as "Mignon", variously put to music, by Ludwig Van Beethoven and others (see recmusic for more details).

Here is the poem:

Kennst du die Sängerin mit Stimme klar und rein
Insgesamt Freude zusammen zu sein
Die besten Freunde, mit uns verkleben
Jugendlich, wunderbar, voller Leben
Kennst du ihr
Dahin, ihr
Meine Sängerin, klar und rein

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A loose and rather un-poetic translation:

Do you know the songstress with the voice clear and pure
A total joy to be around
The best of friends, sticks with us
Young and wonderful, full of life
Do you know her
There, her
My songstress, clear and pure.

Love

"An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Feet: To chase after.
Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.
A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed."

— Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (مولانا جلال الدین محمد رومی)

Wenn die beste Freundin

The past, the future: Wenn die beste Freundin

When the best girlfriend
With the best girlfriend,
for shopping,
for shopping,
going for a walk,
tramping the streets,
blabbing about everything,
says the best girlfriend
to the best girlfriend.
My best girlfriend.
o my best girlfriend,
o my pretty girlfriend,
o my faithful girlfriend,
o my sweet girlfriend!
Walks the best girlfriend
With the best girlfriend,
says the best girlfriend
to the best girlfriend:
My best, my best girlfriend.

-Yes, what does the best girlfriend say?
Tell me what crosses your mind!
- Also, I can only tell you one thing, if
I didn’t have you, we get along so well…
- Yes, we get along terribly well.
- How good we get along!
- We can hardly bear how great we get along,there is just one person I
get along with equally well, and that is my little cute husband.
- Yes, with your little cute husband

Yes, my husband is a man!
What a man, like my husband!
Like the husband of the wife,
like the husband of the wife
We used to have paramours,
but they exist no longer!
Today instead of paramours,
we have girlfriends!

- Your little man is a bit pushy!
-So?
-Yes.
- Why?
- Well, I find
- Well, why?
-Why I find …?
- Why you find?
- He does those things…
- I don’t like that!
- Hmm. Okay,. Let’s make up! (Kisses)
- Okay, we make up! (Kisses)

Every Person

Every person has at least one secret that will break your heart.

Remembrance

11-11-11 11-11

The Love of My Life

"I feel happy with you, I think you're the love of my life, and I don't ask for anything more than that.  But that shouldn't be possible: I ought to ask for more.  I'm trapped in a system from which I get so little, and which I know is pointless, but I don't know how to get out.  At some point, everyone should take the time to think about it, but I don't know where we are supposed to find that time."

(Houellebecq, Michel, "Platform", Vintage International, New York, 2004, p. 117)

Respect the individual, not the multitude

Man is by nature good.
Men are depraved and perverted by society.
Respect the individual, not the multitude.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1776), from "Emile" (1762), (trans. Dent, p. 198)

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state - Aristotle

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
- Aristotle

A vast cerealic, frugiferous, lanigerous and pelliferous region

"MULTILOQUENT VERBOSITY  This week I stumbled upon a review in an
American magazine, The Academy, dated 1 October 1881. It was of E W
White's Cameos from the Silver-land; or the Experiences of a Young
Naturalist in the Argentine Republic, a classic work of economic
geography and natural history. The reviewer complained, "The author
is terribly fond of long words. To him plants become bosquetish,
plains are sabulous, cattle are meat-bearing beeves, dead men are
cadavers, parrots are psittacs. The Republic is 'a vast cerealic
and frugiferous as well as a lanigerous and pelliferous region'."

A glossary - "bosquetish": of bushes or woods (related to "bosky");
"sabulous": sandy; "psittac": parrot (the review is one of only two
citations for the word in the Oxford English Dictionary's entry,
the other being from 1425); "cerealic": of cereals (the only
example in the OED); "frugiferous": fruit-bearing: "lanigerous":
wool-bearing (related to "lanolin", from Latin "lana", wool); and
"pelliferous": this is unknown to the Oxford English Dictionary or
any other source I've checked. I'm guessing the author created it
from the old word "pell" for an animal's hide (a close relative of
"pelt", from Latin "pellis", skin, leather, or parchment), from
which came the equally rare "pell-monger", a dealer in skins and
furs; from context the word means "rich in fur-bearing animals"."

 - from Michael Quinion's World Wide Words - an excellent resource regarding words and language. Consider subscribing to his newslist (http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm) and have a look at his site (http://www.worldwidewords.org/).

But if, at this instant, you were holding the hand of a woman you loved

'Well, of course, that's an understood thing; the heart's not an apple;
you can't divide it. If you're in love, you're justified. And I wasn't
thinking of scoffing. My heart's as soft at this moment as if it had
been melted.... I only wanted to explain why nature has the effect on us
you spoke of. It's because she arouses in us a need for love, and is not
capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us to other living
embraces, but we don't understand, and expect something from nature
herself. Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky is beautiful, everything
around us is beautiful, still you are sad; but if, at this instant, you
were holding the hand of a woman you loved, if that hand and the whole
woman were yours, if you were even seeing with her eyes, feeling not
your own isolated emotion, but her emotion--nature would not make you
melancholy or restless then, and you would not be observing nature's
beauty; nature herself would be full of joy and praise; she would
be re-echoing your hymn, because then you would have given her--dumb
nature--speech!'
 - Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818-1883), "On the Eve" (trans. Garnett, Constance (1861-1946), Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6902), eBook-No 6902, 1 Nov 2004

21 steps to philosophy

A XKCD strip had an image text rollover which stated:

Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

This site has a little script which lets you test it out (I have included a sample below) - but it is fun doing it yourself.  Follow the instructions above and you will see that it really does work.

Mind you - it does not always work - there are some pages which result in an endless loop - which may constitute philosophy in its own right!

---

xkcd wikipedia steps to philosophy

(Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy")

Start from article: http://en.wikipedia.org.wiki/

sutherland

1. sutherland
2. registration_county
3. great_britain
4. island
5. continent
6. landmass
7. land
8. earth
9. planet
10. orbit
11. physics
12. natural_science
13. science
14. knowledge
15. information
16. sequence
17. mathematics
18. quantity
19. property_(philosophy)
20. modern_philosophy
21. philosophy

21 steps to philosophy

Before beginning, plan carefully - Cicero

Before beginning, plan carefully.
 - Cicero

Hoodwinks the boundary gluttonous mutton chops

Hoodwinks the boundary gluttonous mutton chops

Speaking and Preparation

“If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now“
- Woodrow Wilson

Missing Something

You will miss a ton, but that’s OK. We’re so caught up in trying to do everything, experience all the essential things, not miss out on anything important … that we forget the simple fact that we cannot experience everything. That physical reality dictates we’ll miss most things. We can’t read all the good books, watch all the good films, go to all the best cities in the world, try all the best restaurants, meet all the great people. But the secret is: life is better when we don’t try to do everything. Learn to enjoy the slice of life you experience, and life turns out to be wonderful.

Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage - Cicero

Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage - Cicero

The Phantom of Youth

The Phantom of Youth

This right and true man

This right and true man
This egregious damage
to one so fine, so good
Matters not, matters not.

It is hard to accommodate the paradox that we can find the world so beautiful, and so much in the world so beautiful, and other people so beautiful, when, in fact, the reality is that the world is inhospitable, terrible and terrifying, utterly contemptuous of humanity and human nature.

It rejects humans.  It rejects finer thought and finer things.  It's viciousness knows no bounds and it is unequivocal in its uncaring impartiality.  It matters not who lives or who dies, who prospers or who declines.  It cares not that one minute it makes one person tall and strikes another down, to then, the very next minute, strike down the tall one and bring forth to glory the downtrodden one - or, if it will, leave the downtrodden to be even further defeated.  Dust to dust whilst still alive.

This is not god.  This is not a vengeful and spiteful god.  There is no justice, there is no right, no fairness, no caring.  There is unknowing and unknowable chance, colliding happenstances that infiltrate and rearrange existence, now in another manner, now in another form.  It matters not, matter is pliable, and it plies its horror on us and through us.  We keep the universe alive by letting it manipulate us, in its dance of destruction and regeneration.  The choice we make is to breathe.  The control we have is to breathe.  Yet, that is no choice, no control, at all.  We exist to breathe, to now become another, to not be the same thing we were prior to our breath.

That is us.  We are now done.

Risibility

Besides, risibility come to man from his fundamental intention: he tortures himself, bloodies himself, and kills himself trying to reach the sublime summit.  And what does he hope to find there?  Being.  Well, supposing the impossible, were he to reach it he would merely discover universal nonbeing and his own nothingness.
 - Jean Paul Sartre, Carol Cosman: "The Family Idiot, Gustave Flaubert 1821-1857", The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, page 190

A human is the only computer that can be mass produced with unskilled labor

A human is the only computer that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Werner von Braun, paraphrased