( via / via )

"Alterity. That’s where my heart beats." (via @mcmansionhell)

"As I watch the moon
Shining on pain's myriad paths,
I know I am not
Alone involved in Autumn."

--Oe no Chisato (tr Rexroth)

This has always been one of my favorite tankas.
My Lojban version:

   MI GE ZGANA LE
LUNRA GUSNI BE SO'I
   XRANI DARGU GI
JIJNU LE CRITU MORNA
BE GE MI GI NABO MI

--which literally reads: 'I observe the lunar illuminer of many harming roads, & intuit an autumn pattern of me & not-me.'

I became dissatisfied with Rexroth's flouting of the traditional 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern, so i rewrote it as:

   As i see the moon
Tracing all the manifold
   Highways & footpaths
Of pain, i know i am not
Alone involved in Autumn.

"Public life has private impact; some of it breaks our brains, and some of it breaks our hearts."

"Now in the mind of Mr. Southey reason has no place at all, as either leader or follower, as either sovereign or slave. He does not seem to know what an argument is. He never uses arguments himself. He never troubles himself to answer the arguments of his opponents. It has never occurred to him, that a man ought to be able to give some better account of the way in which he has arrived at his opinions than merely that it is his will and pleasure to hold them. It has never occurred to him that there is a difference between assertion and demonstration, that a rumour does not always prove a fact, that a single fact, when proved, is hardly foundation enough for a theory, that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths, that to beg the question is not the way to settle it, or that when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing than 'scoundrel' and 'blockhead.' " --Macaulay

A Glimpse of Light.