Author Archives: threadfollower

Table Talk

The Table of Life never stops asking for your bet.
Black, red, odd, even, and lucky seven always roll.

Pascal made his wager with drinking buddies at the bar
while his Bible stayed at home, closed on the bedside table.

If a table could talk, a table would say,
"The Table God has four legs, not three."

When we declare, "All are welcome at this table!"
remember, the invitation is for those not in the room.

Once I was told to "Lay it all out on the table."
I declined. My life is more profound than any metaphor.

Winter Questions – 1

Who is it that sits in the clouds planning 
the shape of a snowflake before it falls?

Why is peppermint ice cream only sold
during the cold and winter holidays?

Who paints each blade of grass at night with white,
glazes each branch and limb with icy frost?

Where is lukewarm between hot chocolate
and melting, pink peppermint ice cream?

What makes the cardinal's red stand sharply
out against the bare, brown winter branch?
It is that time of the year once again.  
To honor the memory of our beloved daughter, 
Sydney Marie Brotheridge, whose passion was Neuroscience, 
we are opening up her scholarship fund at her 
Alma mater, Indiana University, for contributions.  
We wholeheartedly ask for your 
financial contribution during these next two weeks.  
Sydney's birthday was December 28.
A matching challenge of $500 has been offered
 for contributions made after the first $500 collected.  
The first scholarship out of Sydney's fund 
was awarded to a Neuroscience student this past Fall.
Thank you so much for your support!
Brotheridge Scholarship
By Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/brotheridge-scholarship?fbclid=IwAR3btDxDQp7TOr6iTfhcZ-170yTa1HvZNF4jBGD3mmOwS4pRzO54yyB33BI

“The End”

"The end is where we start from."
                                       - - T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
I am a teleologist of circumstance.
Call it a gift, a gift to see endings.
For example, I know the fate of Fate.
(Clotho runs out of fiber.
Lachesis breaks her measuring rod.
Atropos loses her scissors.)
I could tell you how Death dies.
(If I did, though, the knowledge would kill you.)
Just kidding.  His scythe rusts to nothing.
The odor of the trash heap of History fills my nose.
The tides of Destiny evaporate in the expanding sun.
Apocalyptic visions offered by those in slick suits don't move me.
The horses of the four horsemen become dog food.
All the mints made on Wall Street are eventually eaten.
Just rewards, though, don't amount to too much. 
When all is said and done, all will be said and done.
The inevitable finally gives way to evitability.
The child of Necessity invents a new mother.
Gazing into a crystal ball becomes a high school history lesson.
END statements never end while the heaven of Neverland ever ends.
The anticipation that asks the question, "What happens next?" eludes me.
Mystery remains a mystery.
Don't tell Alpha: Omega brings the show to a close.
To conclude, I don't know how it all ends,
other than with the excuse the ends justify the means
and there is no ribbon at the last finish line.

4 – Of Solitude

(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)

There are some temperaments 
better adapted than others 
to these precepts of withdrawal 
from the world.

It seems to me that it is wise,
when one talks of withdrawing
from the world, to look
away from it.

It should no longer be your 
concern to make the world 
speak of you, but how you should 
speak to yourself.

Withdraw into yourself, but first
prepare to receive yourself.

3 – Of the Soul

(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)

Our sickness is of the soul;
now the soul can not escape from itself.

We have a soul that can be turned to itself;
it can be its own company;
it has the means of attack and of defence,
of giving and of receiving.

Let us not fear the becoming dull
in this solitude from wearisome inactivity;
in lonely places be to yourself a multitude.

The greatest thing in the world
is to know how to belong to oneself.

2 – Of Change

(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)

Let us answer on behalf of ambition who gives us a taste for solitude.

It is not that the wise man can not live content everywhere,
aye, and alone, in the throng of a palace.
But we do not always intelligently seek the pathway to this end.

          (Often we think that we have abandoned affairs
          when we have only changed them.)

Consequently, because we are quit of the court and the marketplace,
we are not quit of the chief torments of our life.

Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and all greedy desires,
do not desert us when we change our abiding-place.

     (Socrates was told that a certain person had not changed
     for the better in his travels.  "I must believe it," said he,
     "for he carried himself with him.")

We carry our fetters with us;
it is not complete liberty;
we still turn our eyes toward what we have left;
our thoughts are full of it.

1 – Of the Worst Men

(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)

Let us leave on one side this tedious comparison
   between a solitary life and an active life.
Let us boldly refer ourselves to those who are in the whirl.
The evil methods by which men push themselves forward
   clearly indicate that the end is worth no more than the means.
Everywhere it is possible to do good and ill;
   none the less, the worst men are the greater number.
For good men are rare, that in a thousand there is not one good.

There is great danger of contagion in a crowd.
We can not help imitating the vicious or else hating them.

     There is danger,
     because they are numerous, 
     of resembling them;
     and because they are unlike us,
     danger of hating them much.

And the merchants who travel by sea are wise
  to look to it that those who sail on the same ship
are neither dissolute nor blasphemers nor wicked men,
  esteeming such company unlucky.