"The Questioner of the Sphinx" by Elihu Vedder (1863)
The guardian of the riddle must speak in riddles.
*
Logical interpretations are the Miracle’s modesty.
*
So long as you trust in anything else, the miracle shall be withheld.
*
To acquire a third eye, one cannot blink.
*
Trust in longing to sing itself.
*
One definition of success might be: refining our appetites, while deepening our hunger.
*
Fear of success betrays a greater self-mistrust than fear of failure.
*
It’s easier to be fearless, when we remember that we are deathless.
*
The great whale hunt of the spirit life is also pursued in our dreams.
*
We must try to carefully guard our thoughts, for they might be secreted to others in dreams.
*
For those who discount dreams, consider this: relationships might start, or falter, while we sleep.
*
As we make peace with ourselves, we become more tolerant of our faults — in others.
*
All who are tormented by an Ideal must learn to make an ally of failure.
*
Our salvation lies on the other side of our gravest danger.
*
Where there are demons, there is something precious worth fighting for.
*
Poor rational mind, it would sooner accept a believable lie than an incredible truth.
*
Every Messiah is reluctant - at least, initially.
*
Intuition asks: what use are two open eyes when you're in the dark?
*
All languages are rough translations of our native tongue: the Spirit.
*
Poems are like bodies—a fraction of their power resides in their skin. The rest belongs to the spirit that swims through them
*
And when we think we are stealing from life's fleeting pleasures, we are stealing from our own Eternal Joy.
*
The ascetic does not deny pleasure; he shuns the coarse, in favor of the refined and exalted.
(Art by Agostino Arrivabenne)
*
The ascetic ideal speaks, thus: indulge, and forego Vision.
*
Spiritual fast food leads to spiritual indigestion.
*
Said a poem to a poet: Can I trust you? Is your heart pure to carry me, are your hands clean to pass me on?
*
For the sake of a good line a poet, like a comedian, must be willing to risk everything.
*
From what you have, create what you have not—the poem teaches the poet.
*
When the life of a poet is a poem, the poet becomes a mystic.
*
Numbness is a spiritual malady, true detachment its opposite.
*
You can't bury pain and not expect it to grow roots.
*
If we care for ourselves, we may turn our pain into gifts for others.
If we do not care for our souls, we become a burden for others.
(Photograph by Zakaria Wakrim)
*
If there is someone we might ask forgiveness of, then there is no one we can deny forgiveness to.
*
We steal from ourselves when we share an idea, or a feeling, before it has ripened.
*
Why announce to the world your few good deeds, when you hide your many bad ones—even from yourself?
*
The more closely we listen to ourselves, the more likely we are to overhear others.
*
To evolve means we’ve been listening.
*
If we ask life for favors, we must be prepared to return them.
*
Just as mysteriously as spiritual favors are granted, so they may also be revoked.
*
Wings are, always, on loan.
*
If our hearts should harden and turn to ice, we must try, at least, not to blame the weather.
*
Unlike prose, poetry can keep its secrets.
*
Poetry is what we say to ourselves, when there's nowhere to hide.
*
Poetry is the distance between us and our pain.
*
It’s not easy to speak to ourselves – we must devise ruses, interventions.
*
What we look for in a good book, painting, music or conversation? A stretch of runway to take off, and return us to ourselves.
*
We scramble the first half of our lives to assemble a self; and, in the second half, if we are wise, to dismantle it.
*
Self is a labyrinth, at the heart of which sits Spirit, hoping to be found.
*
Character is what we are in company—alone we are everyone.
*
Conversation, there’s nothing like it – except silence.
*
Poetry: the native tongue of hysterics—adolescents and mystics, alike.
*
Mysticism is the disappearing act that takes a lifetime.
*
To become a mystic is not impossible; one must only endure being a beggar, mad and dead.
*
It is possible to subsist entirely on a diet of honey and wine, or poetry and mysticism.
*
Know your Muse, and its diet.
*
When the Muse is silent, confess ignorance.
—Yahia Lababidi is the author, most recently, of Balancing Acts: New & Selected Poems (1993-2015) which debuted in April, 2016 at #1 on Amazon's Hot New Releases, under Middle Eastern poetry. Lababidi's first book, a collection of original aphorisms: Signposts to Elsewhere was selected as a 2008 Book of the Year, by The Independent (UK). For more information, please, visit his Page.
The sentences selected in Porcupines were rendered aphoristic by extraction, but at the same time rendered metamorphic by relocation into their contexts. The specimens were all double-refracted. They all, I think, had a stance sufficient to hold the page as an aphorism under fire, but they also had their context available as a place of retreat. When an author launches into a salvo of aphorisms there are many pitfalls, not least the problem of portentiousness. I don't know precisely what makes a sentence portentious. But some just are. They then are orotund and bloated corpses on the slab of the page.
Posted by: Graham Higgin | July 25, 2017 at 12:14 PM