Author: James Geary

Back in 1993, James Richardson (Geary’s Guide, pp. 302-303) was reading Michel de Montaigne as part of his research for an essay-in-progress. A footnote referred him to François de la Rochefoucauld’s Maxims, an encounter that both delighted and provoked him. Soon he began scribbling ripostes and revisions to La Rochefoucauld’s cynical sayings—and thus his affection for aphorisms was born. Richardson calls his maxims “literary Doritos, a vaguely guilty pleasure, like playing video games or eating corn chips.” He likens aphorisms to wisecracks: “They give you the turn without the long straightaway, the take-off without the mile of runway.”

Richardson shares a mystical streak with Antonio Porchia. Both men chronicle their spirituality through small domestic natural wonders. And both men’s aphorisms have the knack of revealing the marvelous in the mundane. Richardson’s sayings, published in his books of poetry, can also often be read as compact morality tales, like those of Marie von Ebner–Eschenbach.

Richardson is a master of The Observation, one of the eight types of aphorism. Normally formulated as simple declarative sentences, these seemingly superficial statements contain hidden depths. At first sight, they can often be mistaken for truisms. But in the hands of a master, this type of aphorism is always acutely and astutely observed. These Observations come from Richardson’s latest book, By the Numbers, a finalist for the National Book Award.

Nothing dirtier than old soap.

When it gets ahead of itself, the wave breaks.

Snakes cannot back up.

Listen hardest to the one you hope is not telling the truth.

Tragedy and comedy ended with death or marriage, but our shows, mystery and sitcom, begin with them.

A knot is strings getting in each other’s way. What keeps us together is what keeps us apart.

Closing a door very gently, you pull with one hand, push with the other.

Jim Finnegan, proprietor of the always enlightening ursprache blog as well as the aphoristically amazing Tramp Freighter, sends news of another of his aphoristic discoveries: Mark Leidner (@markleidner), author of The Angel in The Dream of Our Hangover (Sator Press). “Philosophers often use the aphorism as a spur to more fully developed thought,” Jim writes. “Salon wits use the aphorism to score points in bright conversation. Poets, being prone to concision, also have an affinity for the aphorism. But for poets the aphorism is a sine qua non sufficient to itself. It doesn’t have to do anything but be. Occasionally, Mark Leidner repeats some familiar postmodern pieties, but I forgive him for that, because he has the gift of pith.There are some longer entries and a few true poems interspersed in this collection, but here is a selection in the sententious mode from this lovely small book”:

when complex things combine to form something complex, there is no mystery

a win without surprise is a loss worse than loss

the better at listening you are the better at forgetting you better be

what is most strange and what is most common both point at what is most ancient

anything worth doing is worth taking your lifetime to do

weddings before you’re aware of your mortality are farces

the mountain thinks it’s left the earth

history is the first enemy, and in the end, the only companion, of every visionary

missing someone is like what the wind feels like to itself

The good people at the Macmillan Dictionary Blog, makers of Metaphorical English Month, sends news of this BBC piece featuring some of the best metaphors contestants on The Apprentice have used to advertise their business acumen and selling skills. Last year, Stuart Baggs described himself not as “a one-trick pony, I’m not a 10-trick pony. I’ve got a field of ponies waiting to literally run towards this job.” This embellishment of a metaphorical cliche is brilliant in and of itself, but its luster is enhanced by the metaphorical use of the word ‘literally’, which is increasingly deployed to emphasize that what is being said is absolutely not meant literally at all, resulting in a kind of metaphorical double negative, which I suppose makes this linguistic use alright.  Here are some other classic metaphors from the BBC piece:

Business is the new rock ‘n’ roll and I’m Elvis Presley. —Philip Taylor

Don’t tell me the sky is the limit when there’s footsteps on the moon. —Melody Hossani

My first word wasn’t mummy, it was money. —Shibby Robati

For related metaphorical shenanigans, check out this piece from Forbes on the greatest advertising taglines of all time…

Michael J. Carter sends a handful of aphorisms in the grand tradition of the moralists, aphorists who use the form primarily as a tool for moral instruction. This is, in fact, one of the oldest forms the aphorism takes, dating back to the earliest recorded examples of written literature, from the ancient Egyptians and Chinese. Carter also taps into an ancient metaphor in the second aphorism below: ‘money is a flowing liquid’…

Compassion is the acceptable way of showing someone you are better off than they.

Money flows from the ugly to the beautiful.

Two kinds of leaders: those who look behind and those who look ahead. Beware those who look ahead.

One’s dislikes are strongest for those closest and farthest.

A reader in Madrid sends news of Casitodo El Mundo Esta Chiflado: El Ingenio y Saber de Isaac David Garuda Un Pequeño, Libro Rojo Para No-Maoistas (a.k.a. Most People Are Nuts: The Wit & Wisdom of Isaac David Garuda, A Little Red Book For Non-Maoists), a small English-Spanish book of aphorisms published by Hapi Books in Manzanares El Real, Spain. October, 2010. Isaac David Garuda is new to me. Here are some of the non-Maoisms from his little red book:

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom. A sage is a philosopher who lives the wisdom that he/she loves.

The great paradox of human existence is this: On the one hand, we are 100% accountable for everything that happens, and on the other, we have no control over anything.

Religion is for people who are afraid to burn in hell. Spirituality is for people who’ve already been there, done that.

Life is like a joke. You don’t understand a joke; you either get it or you don’t.

David Brooks penned an interesting piece on metaphor in yesterday’s New York Times, Poetry for Everyday Life: “Being aware of metaphors reminds you of the central role that poetic skills play in our thought. If much of our thinking is shaped and driven by metaphor, then the skilled thinker will be able to recognize patterns, blend patterns, apprehend the relationships and pursue unexpected likenesses. Even the hardest of the sciences depend on a foundation of metaphors. To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called ‘pedestrian poetry’.”

In magazine journalism, writing a cover story is a big deal. Your first cover story is one of the milestones in your career. These stories can be several thousand words long and take weeks, if not months, to report and write. The actual covers themselves are the kinds of things you frame and hang on your office wall. So I was honored and delighted to see that I have a cover story in the current issue of Hotel Amerika, an issue entirely devoted to aphorisms. Unlike my previous cover stories, this one consists of just six words and took me about one second to write (or about 40 years, depending on if you count all the background research I had been unwittingly doing simply by being alive). That story, in full:

When in doubt, remain in doubt.

If you’re interested in aphorisms, this issue is a must-have. It’s not online, so contact Hotel Amerika and order a copy. It is a brilliant compendium of contemporary aphorisms and aphorists. Regular readers of this blog will encounter many familiar aphorists, but there are just as many that will be new. Editor David Lazar has assembled a lively collection of aphorisms that chronicles and celebrates the diversity and vitality of the form. Below is just a brief sampling of some of the treasures. Get your own copy and enjoy!

A series of aphorisms, however well executed, is torture to get through, with the possible exception of books where one aphorism only is printed on each page. Then the field of white space relaxes the eye, and in the luxury of the pause, one realizes how deeply one wants to throw the book across the room.  — Sara Levine

You might get away with murder, but you can never get away with life. — Holly Woodward

Hatred, like love, thrives on silly details. — James Richardson

I am an excerpt from my own life. —Denis Saleh

Comedy, like religious ritual, needs an assembly of like-minded people. —Manfred Weidhor

Faith is a room with more exits than entrances. —George Murray

My watch band broke leaving my arm exposed to eternity. —Daniel Liebert

Leading horses to water is management;

Making them drink is leadership. —Rick Rauch

How hard is it to concentrate? Any garden hose can do it. —Anne Lauinger

Language was created not to break our silence, but as an alternative to screaming. —Matthew Westbrook

Better to do nothing
Than waste time.
—Eric Nelson

The people that we are tired of we usually sleep with. —Richard Krause

Yesterday I was at Flatford Mill, the site of John Constable’s family business and the setting for some of his most famous paintings. Constable, like Van Gogh, is one of those painters whose work is so famous that it is difficult to actually ‘see’ it anymore. With Van Gogh, usually you ‘see’ the paintings once, the first time, and then you just see the t-shirts, coffee cups, and place mats after that.  I never ‘saw’ Constable at all, though. His paintings are so famous, and so ubiquitous on tea towels, coasters, and jigsaw puzzles, that I never even looked once, much less actually ‘saw.’ But with my daughter’s class at Flatford Mill, I looked at Constable for the first time—or at least, at the color reproductions we carried with us as we walked around the lush, green countryside visiting the places that he painted—and was amazed at what I saw: vivid, vivacious scenes of everyday life, painted with incredible intensity and love for the people and places depicted. I finally understood why Constable is so famous.

So yesterday morning, I was sitting in front of Constable’s father’s mill, on a bench that afforded me a view of Willy Lott’s house identical to the one that Constable painted in The Hay Wain, when a FedEx van drove up and parked right in front of my nose, blocking my view of Willy Lott’s house and the little mill pond and replacing it with the passenger door of the FedEx van, which had the slogan

The world on time

painted on the side of it. I was annoyed at the driver’s thoughtlessness—disrespect even—until I realized what a perfect example this was of metaphor imitating life, or life imitating metaphor, I’m not sure which. The FedEx van and its slogan are the perfect metaphor for the way the constant pressure of work and worry and deadlines obstructs my appreciation of the commonplace beauty of daily life—of looking at, really looking at paintings; of walking in the countryside on a gorgeous sunny day with my daughter; of sitting on a bench and simply doing nothing.

FedEx delivers the world on time, and for that I am truly grateful. But it also gets in the way of another world, a world that is just as important and, in fact, far more permanent than the one FedEx delivers. Constable painted a world so intensely present and so detailed that it is both a world completely in and of its time and a timeless world, too. The world that’s happening in The Hay Wain happens forever, and the fact that it happened at all is because John Constable stopped the other things he was doing and ‘saw’ it.

The FedEx driver picked up or dropped off whatever package he needed to pick up or drop off, and then he drove away, restoring to me my unobstructed view of Willy Lott’s house and another world—just in time, too.