Chamblee54

“So many times I’ve made myself stupid with the fear of being outsmarted.” James Richardson (b. 1950) “Vectors: 56 Aphorisms and Ten-second Essays” Michigan Quarterly Review, #17 (Spring 1999) Wish I’d Said That put this up on twitter. I made a copy of the 56AATSE. … This is a repost from 2021. Per Wikipedia, James Richardson is still alive.
It sat ignored on my desktop. until this morning. I was looking for something to work with, and started to pick out aphorisms that spoke to me. The first two to make the cut were #3 and #5, which are key players in the fibonacci sequence. Why not just eliminate all the players, except for the f-numbers? Then use those actors as a writing prompt.
First, we need to look into James Richardson. Turns out he is a recently retired English Professor at Princeton. A princeton.edu document has stories about Dr. Richardson: “Some of his colleagues in English will remember how, as department secretary, he recorded the minutes of meetings in rhyming couplets. … Jim is a philosopher-poet in the tradition of … his fellow baseball fan, Walt Whitman.” Apparently, Jim is a Yankees fan, which we can forgive.
1 “No matter how fast you travel, life walks.” Dr. Richardson is fond of semantics.
2 “Desire’s most seductive promise is not pleasure but change, not that you might possess your object but that you might become the one who belongs with it.” Ditto.
3 “There are silences harder to take back than words.” This is the first one that was noteworthy. This does not mean that I agree. Sometimes, the best thing to say is nothing at all. This goes against a commodity wisdom crowd-pleaser. “The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Say Nothing.” As Mike Hunt once said, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
Kyle Rittenhouse might have a few things to say about this. He heard stories of angry mobs ransacking businesses, and decided to do something. Mr. Rittenhouse was severely punished for his decision to help out. Many of the people who spoke out, about the trial, should have kept their thoughts to themself. Justice is not a popularity contest.
5 “If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.” 90% of the time, when people say theory, they really should say hypothesis. It is not known how this relates to reuseable wisdom.
8 “Everyone loves the Revolution. We only disagree on whether it has occurred.” There is a activist recipe. “To make an omelette, you have to break eggs.” Whenever I hear this, I feel like an egg.
13 “Like late afternoon, a pale cirrus crosses the nearly transparent moon. They are so alike, meeting, that I feel, suddenly and childishly, They like each other. Somehow I can’t help liking them for that. Somehow I can’t help feeling that they like me liking them.” Like Joni Mitchell, Dr. Richardson really doesn’t know clouds at all. We are talking about an atmospheric mass of water droplets, and a big rock traveling 403,000 kilometers away from earth.
21 “Birds are amazing, newspapers, stoves, friends. All that happens is amazing, if you think about it. All that doesn’t happen is even more amazing, because there’s so much more of it. Only habit keeps us from seeing all this. Habit is really amazing.” Is Dr. Richardson talking to newspapers, stoves, or friends? Maybe he is talking to all three. Of course, this was back when print media was much more popular than today, so maybe a newspaper was his friend. This does not account for the stove.
34 “I seem to need a larger vocabulary to talk to you than to talk to myself.” There are things that you know, that you never have to describe. When you talk to another person, you need to explain.
55 “Happiness is gratitude in search of something to be owed to.” Dr. Jim is probably grateful to the University of Michigan, for publishing his 56 Bright Ideas. When you are a high level academic, you need to publish things. UM is playing Georgia on New Years Eve. Many people in Alabama would be grateful if Georgia wins. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Selah.