#musings

Old Man River! That seems far too austere a name For something made of mirth and rage. O, roiling red-blood river vein, If chief among your traits is age, You're a wily, convoluted sage. Is "old" the thing to call what rings The vernal heart of wester-lore; What brings us brassy-myth made kings (And preponderance of bug-type things) To challenge titans come before? Demiurge to a try at Avalon-once-more! And what august vitality In your wide aorta stream You must have had to oversee Alchemic change of timber beam To iron, brick and engine steam. Your umber whiskey waters lance The prideful sober sovereignty Of faulty-haloed Temperance And wilt her self-sure countenance; Yes, righteousness is vanity, But your sport's for imps, not elderly. If there's a name for migrant mass Of veteran frivolity That snakes through seas of prairie grass And groves of summer sassafras, A name that flows as roguishly As gypsy waters, fast and free, It's your real name, Mississippi. ↗

— Tracy J. Butler

#musings #poetry #age

Solitude led to retrospective thinking, and if the past is what you are trying to get away from, then constant distractions in the present are needed. ↗

— R.D. Ronald

#philosophical #philosophical-musings #life

Sometimes truths are what we run from, and sometimes they are what we seek. ↗

— R.D. Ronald

#reflection #philosophical

Scott glanced at his watch but didn't register what it said. The notion of time had become as absurd as the quietly glowing trees. ↗

— R.D. Ronald

#philosophical-musings #visual-moments #visualization

Deciding to wait, Scott sat down with a pint away from the bar at a corner table and lit a cigarette. The clientele in there on Sunday afternoon were the same as most other afternoons. From middle-aged to old men, drinking and cursing at the world like it was the last bus which had just left the stop without them. ↗

— R.D. Ronald

#reflection #age

Justice will be found, said Plato, when everyone does their own job, and minds their own business ↗

— Martin Cohen

#business

...my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process; an almost instantaneous loss of vitality--just as though one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust. ↗

— Alberto Moravia

#change

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves. ↗

— Anne Baxter

#devil #distracting #duty #home #idleness

Opening a present from a live person was scary enough. There was always the chance that the gift might be so wrong, so completely not the kind of thing you liked, that you'd realize they didn't really know you at all. ↗

— Carol Rifka Brunt

#home

The day my mother gave us the keys, she also made me and Greta sign a form so that the bank knew our signatures. To get in we had to show our key and sign something so they would know it was really us. I was worried that my signature wouldn't look the same. I wasn't sure when that thing would happen that made it so you always signed your name exactly the same, but it hadn't happened to me yet. So far I'd only had to sign something three times. Once for a code of conduct for the eighth grade field trip to Philadelphia, once for a pact I made with Beans and Frances Wykoski in fifth grade that we'd never have boyfriends until high school. (Of the three of us, I'm the only one who kept that pact.) ↗

— Carol Rifka Brunt

#humor #musings #truth #home