Aphorisms and metaphor just keep on turning up everywhere, including in this song by the band Sparks, pointed out to me last night by James F. Kraus, the art guy.
Check out ‘Using Rap to Teach Pithy Lessons in Business‘ for an interesting story of how one Silicon Valley exec is using aphorisms found in rap lyrics as strategic management tools.
In any other tool, it is a major design flaw. But here it is the single most essential feature. This perforated skull, this bowl held together by holes, keeps what it wants by leaking, lets go what it cannot hold. Take this clutch of strawberries. Pick one and eat it. Savor its sweetness. See it disappearing.
A friend told me a story recently, and it’s one of those stories that is funny at first but, when you think about it, it becomes kind of philosophical, too. It’s story about signs, about looking for signs, and about finding the right road.
My friend was driving along an old country road in Vermont when he came to a crossroads. There were two signs pointing in opposite directions, but they both had the name of his destination written on them: Middlebury. One sign said “Middlebury” and pointed to the left; the other sign said “Middlebury” and pointed to the right. My friend didn’t know which way to turn.
There happened to be an elderly gentleman leaning on a nearby fence, so my friend got out of his car, walked over to the man, and asked, “Does it matter which way I go here?”
The man stared at him blankly for a moment, then said: “Not to me it don’t.”
Our lives are filled with signs. There are street signs, traffic signs, “Keep off the grass” signs, no smoking signs, “For sale” signs, “For rent” signs, one-way signs, “Buy-one-get-one-free” signs, “Push” signs, “Pull” signs, and my favorite kinds of signs: “Entrance” and “Exit” signs. Everywhere we look there are signs.
Of course, in the Bible, everyone is always looking for signs. And we’re still looking. We all come to crossroads in our lives, and we’d love to have a sign, some simple sign that we’ve made the right choice. Did we pick the right course? The right career? The right spouse? Some kind of sign, even a little one, would be nice, just to reassure ourselves that we’re on the right path.
There is no lack of signs in our lives; in fact, if anything, there are too many signs. With so many signs, signs that often contradict each other, how do we decide which way to go? That “Entrance” sign may show you the door but it doesn’t show you what’s behind it, and with every exit you step once again into the unknown.
People of faith believe that God will nudge them in the right direction, will help them choose a path, will give them a sign of signs. People without faith, like me, don’t believe that. I see the world as more like that elderly Vermont gentleman: pretty much indifferent to which road I take. There’s nothing bad about that; it just means I’m looking for different kinds of signs, and I’m looking for them in different kinds of places.
The Polish author Wieslaw Brudzinski wrote:
The most difficult thing to find is the way to the signposts.
I remember this saying when I’m in search of a sign because it’s a reminder that, once you’ve had your sign, the hardest part is already over. If you’re at a crossroads in your life, consider yourself lucky. At least you’ve reached a place where you have to make a clear choice: You either turn left or turn right, go forward or go back.
An even more difficult time is before you reach the crossroads, when you’ve been driving a long, long time through a strange and alien landscape, when you have no idea where you are, where you’re going or even whether you’re headed in the right direction, only that you are a long, long way from home and there is not a single signpost in sight. This is the really hard part, and you know the old guy leaning on the fence isn’t going to help.
The most difficult thing to find is the way to the signposts.
How do you find the path? Or, even more importantly, how do you have the courage to stay on the path when you have no idea where it’s going? It helps to hear what others have said who have also passed this way. Winston Churchill said,
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
This is not a sign, but it is excellent advice if you ever want to find those signposts. The Buddha said,
Be lamps until yourselves.
This is also not a sign, but it does stress the importance of bringing your own source of illumination when you’re looking for one, especially in the dark. Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
There’s no sign here either, just the determination to find one.
When you find yourself in a dark and sign-less time, follow the trail of breadcrumbs others have left behind. If you don’t have faith in a god, you can still have faith in yourself and your fellow man. If you don’t believe in any single sacred scripture, you can still compile a sacred scripture for yourself. “Make your own Bible,” Emerson, a preacher who lost his faith, wrote in his journal. “Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John, and Paul.” And I would add Cyril Connolly, who observed:
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk.
Words like these help guide us through the maze, at least until we find our way to the signposts.
David Melody believes the central importance of the metaphor mind is largely being trampled by most of what goes on in schools. So he and his colleagues at The Private Eye Project are restoring metaphor to its rightful place in education by providing kids with loupes, the little magnifying lenses used by photographers and jewelers, so they can observe the world in new ways. The essential question involved in learning via metaphor is: What is it like?. Interestingly, this is exactly the same central question involved in the therapeutic technique called ‘clean language’, in which metaphor also plays a central role.
The Private Eye Project “promotes a very simple, hands-on way to teach and evoke metaphoric/analogic thinking,” says Melody, associate director of The Private Eye Project. “Founded over 20 years ago by Kerry Ruef, the program has spread to tens of thousands of teachers and the millions of students they represent. About the program Richard Lederer has said, ‘A visionary work. The Private Eye is a gift to all those who care about language.’ U.S. Poet Laureate Richard Haas says, ‘The Private Eye is a wonderful contribution to literacy, poetry and ecological awareness.’ But just as many scientists praise it.“
Dan Carsen of public radio station WBHM did a segment on The Private Eye Project last November: “As one teacher put it, ‘cliché is stripped away,’ and a sense of wonder ensues as magnification seems to change everyday things into something else entirely. But that’s just the beginning. Regardless of subject, students are nudged to make comparisons, and then more comparisons, between what they’re seeing and things they’re already familiar with. This process is repeated, often 10 times, partly to forge mental connections, partly because it shows there’s no wrong answer, that it’s a creative process … Making mental connections between things makes actual neurological connections in the brain. And since we’re talking analogies, you might say the Private Eye program is trying to improve students’ ‘hardware’ through brain-building exercise so they better upload the ‘software of say, ninth-grade social studies. Or just about anything else they come across.” Read or listen to the full story here.
If you love learning and you love metaphor, The Private Eye Project is worth a good long look…
Dinner with Peter Siviglia will not cost you an arm and a leg (he insists on picking up the tab)—unless you happen to be the waiter or waitress, in which case your limbs might be endangered because Mr. Siviglia feigns gnawing at them every time a plate or a glass of water (or more often, a glass of wine) passes before him. Surprised serving staff (and fellow diners) must also contend with a relentless barrage of puns, many of which have clearly already achieved iconic catchphrase status in the annals of Siviglian family lore; to wit, every time Mr. Siviglia is referred to as ‘sir’—as in, “Would you like fries with your burger, sir?”—he responds with mock indignation, “Don’t call me surly!” These traits—the Marx Brothers-esque antics, the inability to pass up any opportunity for a pun—are telltale signs of the inveterate aphorist.
Mr. Siviglia’s aphorisms, which he calls Recipes from the Top of the Food Chain, mix political and moral musings with Ambrose Bierce’s (Geary’s Guide, pp. 356–358) brand of acerbic wit. Like Bierce, Mr. Siviglia writes one of the oldest forms of aphorism—the definition, e.g.
Responsibility: the rejection of excuses.
But he often takes the definition one step further, by adding several layers of philosophical exposition in what might be called the Siviglian syllogism, e.g.
Most people view the world in a mirror and see only themselves. Hence, the Platinum Rule: Do not do unto others as they would not have you do unto them. Corollary to the Platinum Rule: Do not do that which places others in danger.
“I think philosophical wisdom often repeats itself from age to age in different forms,” he says, “but repetition of good is good.” In Recipes from the Top of the Food Chain, Mr. Siviglia serves up fresh takes on age-old philosophical dishes that will definitely keep you coming back for more. Just don’t call him surly…
Truth: the most powerful and disarming of weapons. To believe that you can deceive without detection is self-deception. To admit error is to treat acid with a base.
The two certainties in life: Death and Taxes. Well, it’s time to add a third: Mistakes. Work, therefore, must be checked, rechecked, and checked again. Even then, some mistakes, like pests, will persist; but by then, those that remain, hopefully, will be harmless.
The street cleaner who does his or her job well deserves the same admiration and respect as the PhD who does his or her job well.
Conduct yourself so that everyone can rely on you; be wary in choosing those on whom you rely.
Luck begins and ends when the sperm hits the egg. It is a word for losers and for those few who are both successful and modest. Therefore, take an extended vacation from “if only”, “might have”, “could have”, “would have”, and their colleagues.
When you care what someone thinks of you, you are hostage to that person. Be hostage first—and preferably only—to yourself.
Success: achieving one’s goals. Wealth is a measure of success only if wealth is the goal. Too often people judge the success of others by their own goals.
Three people never to trust: cowards, the greedy, and the desperate.
Sometimes enemies are preferable to friends: you will never turn your back to an enemy. (Consult Julius Caesar.)
But for a moment, money will not buy happiness; yet happiness without money is in jeopardy of lasting little longer than a moment.
Life is too long and too difficult not to (a) fish for trout as often as possible, (b) specify your preference as often as possible.
Even the top of the food chain worries.
Sami Feiring, a Finnish aphorist and charter member of the World Aphorism Organization, sends new translations of aphorisms by Markku Envall (Geary’s Guide, pp. 273–274). Envall practices an uncommon variation on the form—the aphorism sequence—that is popular in Finland. “In an aphorism sequence,” Sami writes, “the basic unit is not a single aphorism but a set of aphorisms, usually about five. The aphorisms in an aphorism sequence usually deal with a common theme but are also intertwined with each other in a more profound way. Several noted Finnish aphorists have used and use the form, including Mirkka Rekola, Paavo Haavikko, and Markku Envall.”
Here is what Envall himself has to say about the aphorism: “The answer to the question of what an aphorist wants to say is his written and published aphorisms. There is hardly any other way to reply to that question. Also, explaining or interpreting one’s aphorisms is useless. In my opinion, an aphorism includes all the meanings the reader finds in it. The author has no exclusive right to the correct interpretation, not to mention the only correct interpretation.”
The first aphorism below is an aphorism sequence.
Man is the cancer of nature, growing uncontrollably and exponentially.
A dead man is a cured cancer cell in the world’s body.
Useful as soil or as ash.
If our species faces extinction, a question arises: Is there then any thought that could comfort us?
Yes, there is. To see our evilness, ugliness, and imbecility; that is the comfort.
The listener gives therapy; the talker takes it.
The lynch mob realizes spontaneously: What is done by many is done by none.
Progress does not abolish social evils but merely increases their variety.
If all people were thrown into the sea, the sea would immediately become cleaner.
As much order as necessary, as much freedom as possible.
The paradox of the avenger: Your enemy dictates your conduct as well as your ethics.
Away with metaphysics! A good life is a series of good moments.
We live as if we had two lives. The first one is used for the acquisition of resources.
When faith replaces knowledge, its reliability is halved but its insistence doubles.
Darwin refuted original sin. The Fall of Adam and Eve is an acquired characteristic.
I’m making progress. My memory is shorter than the circle I’m strolling around.
Sami Feiring, a Finnish aphorist and charter member of the World Aphorism Organization, sends translations of aphorisms by Eero Suvilehto. Born in 1947, Suvilehto is an adjunct professor of Bulgarian literature and has also made a career as a wrestler: He was Nordic Champion in 1972 in Greco-Roman wrestling. His two aphorism collections are Avattava varovasti (1998) and Kysyi sammakko tietä (2007). He also writes poetry, short stories, scholarly articles, and columns. A selection:
Artists, those poor students of life, crib from their teacher.
Borders stop the poor from coming in, not the rich from leaving.
In the theatre of life it’s the actors who direct.
All is said, but not to everyone.
The myth of individuality keeps the herd together.
Poverty is not a sin. It cannot be forgiven.
An army’s best friend is its enemy.
Children are mankind’s attempt to become wiser.
The child asks. You reply with your life.
History: Cosmetics of the past.
Weekend flings with nature: Who’s cheating whom?
When thoughts don’t sell, faces are offered for sale.
History teaches victims to become hangmen.
They pat you on the back, preferably with a knife.
Aphorism and fiction fans have another reason to be festive this holiday season: Sara Levine, associate professor and chair of the Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a charter member of the World Aphorism Organization, has a novel coming out on December 7! Treasure Island!!! is a satirical novel in which the nameless narrator has a dead end job, a passionless relationship and an incredibly bad attitude. But after reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island on a whim, she decides to turn things around and follow in the footsteps of Jim Hawkins. Her best friend is flummoxed (“Isn’t it a boys’ book?”), her sister horrified (“I hate a book with no girls in it”), and her parents are more than a little confused when she moves back home, with a $900 Amazonian parrot on her shoulder, espousing the novel’s core values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn blowing. “When someone spikes your rum cocktail, you want it to have the punch and the smooth finish that this novel does,” novelist Alice Sebold says of the book. “Levine is simultaneously politically incorrect yet humane in this wild romp of a modern farce.”
For a flavor of Treasure Island!!!, what follows is a selection of Levine’s punchy, rumbustious aphorisms, taken from the spring issue of Hotel Amerika, an issue entirely devoted to the form:
Brevity is power, so I make my fictions shorter. The novel became a story, the story became a flash fiction, the flash fiction became an aphorism, but it was little more than a spore. At least when brevity is not power, it reduces the duration of your failure.
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.
She was always saying she would be happy to be a vegetarian, if it weren’t for her husband, who had to have his meat. He was always saying he would be happy to give up wine, if it weren’t for his wife, who loved her drink. And so they ate meat and drank wine till the end of their days, each convinced that they lived well only for the sake of the other.
Why do women write so few aphorisms? he asked me. Why do men write so many?
When my husband was a child, his family kept a few farm animals as pets. One day the cow was gone and a steak was on the table. “But Melody would want you to eat her,” his mother said. And so it always is—the winner’s tongue in the loser’s mouth.
If we establish that I’m good for nothing, am I free to do whatever I want?
I tend to choose narcissists as my friends; that way I don’t worry that they’re talking about me behind my back.
I can give you my psychology in a nutshell: me inside a nutshell, listening for the nutcracker’s approach.
Willpower is like Jesus; it dies so it can be resurrected.
Michael Haaren is the CEO of a training company and writes the monthly Rat Race Rebellion (@RatRaceRebels) column for the Dallas Morning News. “I was living in Paris in Edith Piaf’s run-down 20th arrondissement in the 1980s when I published my first aphorisms,” he writes. “They appeared in short-lived U.S. literary magazines, such as Amelia and Light.” Haaren pens that most daring of aphoristic feats: Writing aphorisms about aphorisms. Ambrose Bierce (Geary’s Guide, pp. 356–358) did it (“Aphorism, n: Predigested wisdom”); Don Paterson (Geary’s Guide, pp. 297–298) does it (“A book of aphorisms is a lexicon of disappointments”); Gabriel Laub (Geary’s Guide, pp. 43–45) did it (“Men appreciate aphorisms because, among other reasons, they contain half-truths. That is an unusually high percentage”); and so did Julien de Valckenaere (Geary’s Guide, pp. 61–62): “The shortest aphorism that makes you think the longest is the best.” Here follows a selection of Michael Haaren’s sayings, taken from the collection-in-progress Quips and Whips.
The difference between the wrong word and the right word is the difference between oceans and continence.
Aphorism (definition): Philosophy and mirth on their way to a funeral.
A popular definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Voting, for example.
The true measure of a man’s mind seldom exceeds six inches.
A good aphorism is like the membrane over a snake’s eye: a thin curtain before a striking truth.
I first blogged about Oleg Vishnepolsky back in 2009, and now he’s back with some more merry musings on art, life, technology and business—which, in Oleg’s case, often end up being (and meaning) the same thing. Russian aphorists typically have a very pronounced streak of black humor in their sayings but, in keeping with one of his own aphorisms, Oleg makes an exception of himself, writing upbeat, optimistic aphorisms that make you laugh as well as think. A selection:
I make mistakes, therefore I am.
Advice is best taken like Russian vodka: in small doses but large quantities.
Out of the ordinary should never be out of the question.
If you say more than you know, pretend that you know more than you say.
When one man sees a dark shadow, another sees the bright light that casts it.
“May ALL your dreams come true” is actually a curse.
It is OK to hide your head in the sand if you keep your mouth shut.
Learning to be patient requires a lot of patience.
You can’t save the present moment for a rainy day.
Cynics are color blind realists.
To innovate, listen and understand all the reasons why something absolutely cannot be done. Then do it anyway.
To close the deficit we need to raise taxes on 5 out of every 4 Americans.
Republicans and Democrats share one thing in common: our tax dollars.
Knowledge is not a sum of facts just like a temple is not a sum of stones.
Silence is a form of communication.
Inspiration finds extraordinary in ordinary. Cynicism finds ordinary in extraordinary.
Never buy a round trip ticket to the point of no return.
We live for the moments to die for.
Your car will last you your lifetime if you keep driving it through red lights.
The book of life has no scrap pages; write with care.
You got it made when you can create rules for others and exceptions for yourself.
You have knowledge when you remember the rules; you have experience when you remember exceptions to those rules.