O! THAT WE COULD LEARN by advice that which can only be learned through experience.
2010 Roundup: Top Posts
IT’S DE RIGUEUR FOR NEWS outlets to wrap up the year with a look at their Big Stories, and we at Metaphorager.Net are no exception despite that we’re only a “news outlet” in the sense of “what’s news to me.” After 10 years of blogging, we only reached our 365th post last week. I could cull my favorites, but that’s a bit too self-serving so here instead is a commented list of this year’s Top Seven Posts by views (as they’re all the stats I could find):
5 Thoughts: Why (and How) We Write 1,636 Views
This was enjoyed and shared by someone with a stumbleupon.com account. I like to imagine it adorning writers’ garrets from here to Montmartre.
About 97 Views
For those who couldn’t help asking, “Who IS this guy?”
ORL Redux: Interview with Robert Anton Wilson 95 Views
Thanks to the wonderful folks at http://rawilsonfans.com, this Most Obscure Interview EVER With Robert Anton Wilson isn’t languishing unread in the bottom of a packing crate.
Links 71 Views
I can’t explain the number here. I sometimes check a site’s links-page if its “About Us” doesn’t tell me enough; maybe others do too. (If that’s the case here, read this instead.) On the other hand, some of these are definitely me checking layout … but not that often.
A Proposal for the Moon of Earth 71 Views
Tied for views with the “Links” page is this immodest proposal to eternalize Stanley Kubrick. I don’t know why it’s not built yet; someone must be on to me. Ooops. Ha ha ha. Is this thing on?
Season’s Regreetings 43 Views
This was also seen and shared through its Facebook page, account, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Same-To-You/178304932195551. (The numbers are essential to the link.) The view count here doesn’t concern me as much as, say, Prosatio Silban or the pithyisms — I’d like to see it spread, credit or not.
Clips 37 Views
News pieces, commentaries and speeches. (Yes, speeches.) Nice to know they hold an interest of some sort — I hope historical.
In related news, the top 10 Google searches turning up a Metaphorager.Net reference are “natural machines” (12), “smallest particle accelerator” (12), “http://metaphorager.net/raw/” (10), “janusz korczak” (6), “metaphorager” (6), “‘jim gjerde’ sputnik” (5), “religious fables” (5), “pithyism” (4), “http://metaphorager.net” (4), and “80s generic foods” (3).
(Also with 3: “linda tomback,” “letter to a dead friend,” “robert anton wilson interview,” “jon stewart slams glenn beck,” “prosatio silban,” “a couple of hamburgers,” and “http://metaphorager.net/frank-frazetta-r” (which full link is actually “http://metaphorager.net/frank-frazetta-rip/.”) Footprints on a digital beach. I like ’em.
First-Step Messiah
CONSIDERING THE GREAT POTENTIAL CONTAINED in most human beings, and the difficulty we have getting started on projects, perhaps we might accordingly revise our notions of messianism. The Re-(or Un-)born King may not set things right so much as give us the tools and gumption we need (or point out that we’ve had them all along). After all, getting started is the hardest start to any project. Perhaps we just need a little push and can take it from there.(1)
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(1) Disclaimer: This being Monday morning, I tend not to believe in a literal Messiah. In fact, I tend not to believe in a Messiah at all unless as metaphor or if I have a really, really bad headache. But “believe as thou wilt shall be the hole in the Law.”
Pithyism #12
YOU’RE BETTER OFF THAN MOST if your dinner worries concern what, rather than whether, to eat.
Days Like Doors
THERE ARE DAYS WHICH OPEN into unglimpsed circles that inspire and uplift.
And there are days which close the heart like a fist.
There are days when the angels sing within range of human ear
And days when all you hear is chopping.
There are days like green hills, a-prance with lambs,
And days like rotting undergrowth, a-stench with mold.
All these days are given unto you,
like gloves God wears when He’s fixing something special
like small wandering children seeking a hand in the dark
like the door that opens into silence and light.
“What A Time We Might Have Had”
THE TITLE IS TAKEN FROM a line in Mark Twain’s Roughing It, and it always comes to mind when I hear someone (or myself) voice a semiserious regret. I don’t carry many of these — not out of “holiness;” it just doesn’t occur to me — and I only say it out loud whenever Ann or I regret something trivial: “Our favorite Twilight Zone episode was on last night” or “The store was out of Brand X” or even “Looks like they’re not repealing the Patriot Act.” It’s part of the private language of people who’ve been together long enough to know and willingly co-conspire with each other’s zigs, zags and wild-eyed lunacies.
Pithyism #24
A GOOD DAY IS ONE in which the artist heaves a stone and the ripples wash up smiles and murmurs.
(Or, put another way, “Blessed be the One who makes the makers.” I don’t know that one needs to “believe” in a “Creator” (or even a “creator”) for that metaphor to work. I hope not. A friend who’s a nurse speaks of the contention-avoiding “Design Group,” which both sounds cool and works well whether you take literally “impersonal forces,” Genesis 1:26 or anything in between. It’s a fine sport to find the universal metaphor embodying the idea of First Cause-ness outside of a specific agency, or even necessity. The Talmud attributes the creation of miracles to the evening of the last day of Creation itself — miracles as nothing more than well-timed and -intended natural occurrences — to which someone added “Including (blacksmith) tongs, which were made with tongs.” When I speak of First Causenesslessness, or even God, it is to just this sort of chicken-or-egg, we’re-all-here-now paradoxical origin as shrouded in mystery as the moment the first fish slithered ashore into the evolutionary chain. Somewhere or somewhen is a moment past which everything was different: the tongs were used, the chicken hatched, the amphibian evolved. It really doesn’t matter what we call it. What matters is that creating puts your hands on the moment of creation (or, if you like, the Moment of Creation). It brings something into the world that wasn’t there before — among other things, beauty, solidified intent, and self-evidence of simple existence.)
(None of which, unfortunately, fits on a bumpersticker. Ah, conciseness! thou’rt a fickle mistress.)