1
" What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world`
With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)??
And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering.
Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time.
Get my point? "
― , Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal
9
" There's folly in her stride
that's the rumor
justified by lies
I've seen her up close
beneath the sheets
and sometime during the summer
she was mine for a few sweet months in the fall
and parts of December
((( To get to the heart of this unsolvable equation, one must first become familiar with the physical, emotional, and immaterial makeup as to what constitutes both war and peace. )))
I found her looking through a window
the same window I'd been looking through
She smiled and her eyes never faltered
this folly was a crime
((( The very essence of war is destructive, though throughout the years utilized as a means of creating peace, such an equation might seem paradoxical to the untrained eye. Some might say using evil to defeat evil is counterproductive, and gives more meaning to the word “futile”. Others, like Edmund Burke, would argue that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing.” )))
She had an identity I could identify with
something my fingertips could caress in the night
((( There is such a limitless landscape within the mind, no two minds are alike. And this is why as a race we will forever be at war with each other.
What constitutes peace is in the mind of the beholder. )))
Have you heard the argument?
This displacement of men and women
and women and men
the minds we all have
the beliefs we all share
Slipping inside of us
thoughts and religions and bodies
all bare
((( “Without darkness, there can be no light,”
he once said. To demonstrate this theory, during one of his seminars he held a piece of white chalk and drew a line down the center of a blackboard. Explaining that without the blackness of the board, the white line would be invisible. )))
When she left
she kissed with eyes open
I knew this because I'd done the same
Sometimes we saw eye to eye like that
Very briefly,
she considered an apotheosis
a synthesis
a rendering of her folly
into solidarity
((( To believe that a world-wide lay down of arms is possible, however, is the delusion of the pacifist; the dream of the optimist; and the joke of the realist. Diplomacy only goes so far, and in spite of our efforts to fight with words- there are times when drawing swords of a very different nature are surely called for. )))
Experiencing the subsequent sunrise
inhaling and drinking
breaking mirrors and regurgitating
just to start again
all in all
I was just another gash in the bark
((( Plato once said:
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Perhaps the death of us all is called for in this time of emotional desperation. War is a product of the mind; only with the death of such will come the end of the bloodshed. Though this may be a fairly realistic view of such an issue, perhaps there is an optimistic outlook on the horizon. Not every sword is double edged, but every coin is double sided. )))
Leaving town and throwing shit out the window
drinking boroughs and borrowing spare change
I glimpsed the rear view mirror
stole a glimpse really
I've believed in looking back for a while
it helps to have one last view
a reminder in case one ever decides to rebel
in the event the self regresses
and makes the declaration of devastation
once more
((( Thus, if we wish to eliminate the threat of war today- complete human annihilation may be called for. ))) "
― Dave Matthes , Wanderlust and the Whiskey Bottle Parallel: Poems and Stories
12
" As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet." Ah, humanity..." But he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He trist to break its fall by laughing at himself. "
13
" Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent. "
― Cassandra Clare , Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)
15
" While I pressed the tissue to my face, Beck said, “Can I tell you something? There are a lot of empty boxes in your head, Sam.”
I looked at him, quizzical. Again, it was a strange enough concept to hold my attention.
“There are a lot of empty boxes in there, and you can put things in them.” Beck handed me another tissue for the other side of my face.
My trust of Beck at that point was not yet complete; I remember thinking that he was making a very bad joke that I wasn’t getting. My voice sounded wary, even to me. “What kinds of things?”
“Sad things,” Beck said. “Do you have a lot of sad things in your head?”
“No,” I said.
Beck sucked in his lower lip and released it slowly. “Well, I do.”
This was shocking. I didn’t ask a question, but I tilted toward him.
“And these things would make me cry,” Beck continued. “They used to make me cry all day long.”
I remembered thinking this was probably a lie. I could not imagine Beck crying. He was a rock. Even then, his fingers braced against the floor, he looked poised, sure, immutable.
“You don’t believe me? Ask Ulrik. He had to deal with it,” Beck said. “And so you know what I did with those sad things? I put them in boxes. I put the sad things in the boxes in my head, and I closed them up and I put tape on them and I stacked them up in the corner and threw a blanket over them.”
“Brain tape?” I suggested, with a little smirk. I was eight, after all.
Beck smiled, a weird private smile that, at the time, I didn’t understand. Now I knew it was relief at eliciting a joke from me, no matter how pitiful the joke was. “Yes, brain tape. And a brain blanket over the top. Now I don’t have to look at those sad things anymore. I could open those boxes sometime, I guess, if I wanted to, but mostly I just leave them sealed up.”
“How did you use the brain tape?”
“You have to imagine it. Imagine putting those sad things in the boxes and imagine taping it up with the brain tape. And imagine pushing them into the side of your brain, where you won’t trip over them when you’re thinking normally, and then toss a blanket over the top. Do you have sad things, Sam?”
I could see the dusty corner of my brain where the boxes sat. They were all wardrobe boxes, because those were the most interesting sort of boxes — tall enough to make houses with — and there were rolls and rolls of brain tape stacked on top. There were razors lying beside them, waiting to cut the boxes and me back open.
“Mom,” I whispered.
I wasn’t looking at Beck, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him swallow.
“What else?” he asked, barely loud enough for me to hear. “The water,” I said. I closed my eyes. I could see it, right there, and I had to force out the next word. “My …” My fingers were on my scars.
Beck reached out a hand toward my shoulder, hesitant. When I didn’t move away, he put an arm around my back and I leaned against his chest, feeling small and eight and broken.
“Me,” I said. "
― Maggie Stiefvater , Forever (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #3)
19
" Powerful I am a form of God's design! I will have whatever my mind is set on; I will be whatever my desire is to be, Around me rolls the power of universe.I stand to gaze and praise myself loud, For my greetings waits the entire nature,I have made choices out of my self-loveI have held to thoughts to please my ownI have taken charted plans to make beautiful way Where I live in a closet of peace with spiritual gainI have the power to change darkness into dazzling light, I have the courage to struggle for my deserving right.With my choices I ride ahead to capture vision and goalsBut it seems life still loves the green grasses and games,Then I fear as I deceive myself and cheat my knowing Soul,For greed of wants, desires I manipulate my Divine own. But the joke is still I achieve what I want in a better way,No one knows how happy I am to be in this humble way,Past is gone and it better leaves me alone for now,My true romance is only with my dear lovely future.I have strength of ocean within me and power of God, Who dares to break me down will never be able to at all,I am the most beautiful design created by my God,His infinite power and tender heart inherited by me...the powerful one- Harshada Pathare "
20
" ...out of the counterfeiting of the black American's identity [in blackface minstrelsy] there arises a profound doubt in the white man's mind as to the authenticity of his own image of himself. He, after all, went into the business when he refused the king's shilling and revolted. He had put on a mask of his own, as it were...For the ex-colonials, the declaration of an American identity meant the assumption of a mask, and it imposed not only the discipline of national self-consciousness, it gave Americans an ironic awareness of the joke that always lies between appearance and reality, between the discontinuity of social tradition and that sense of the past which clings to the mind. And perhaps even an awareness of the joke that society is man's creation, not God's. Americans began their revolt from the English fatherland when they dumped the tea into Boston Harbor, masked as Indians, and the mobility of the society created in this limitless space has encouraged the use of the mask for good and evil ever since. "
― Ralph Ellison , Shadow and Act