On Roads
Posted on August 29, 2008
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Roads are our oldest artefacts. We create them instinctively, inadvertently, simply by going to and fro upon the earth and walking up and down on it. With every step, wherever we turn, we either find a road or make one. Roads don’t go anywhere, though. Once established, they remain fixed, stationary. We travel to Rome by the same routes as the ancient Romans, albeit by other transport modes. We can take high roads or low roads; those trampled flat from traffic or those tangled and overgrown. We can stick to the straight and narrow or go off the beaten track. Whichever way we choose, the only options are forward or back. If a map doesn’t show the place we want to go, we need a new road.
A version of this abbreviated essay appears in the October issue of Ode.
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On Doors
Posted on August 8, 2008
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What are they but holes with hinges, lidded interstices? They are almost nothing, a frame around empty space, yet everything swings on them. They stand there indifferent, impenetrable, not caring whether we go out or come in. We hurry through them, never sure in doing so whether we have just accepted an invitation or ignored a warning, never even sure if we’re entering or exiting. Some doors open so fast and so wide we mistake them for abysses; others shut so subtly and so slowly we never notice them closing.
A version of this abbreviated essay appeared in the September issue of Ode.
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Aphorisms by Warren Buffett
Posted on July 28, 2008
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The other day I found a signed copy of Thoughts of Chairman Buffett by Warren Buffett at one of the used bookstalls underneath Waterloo Bridge in London. In the introduction, I learned that if I had invested $10,000 with Mr. Buffett in 1956 my money would have grown to $80,000,000 today. That would be just about enough, I think.
Buffett got an early start in business. As a teenager, he wrote a horse racing tip sheet, and by the time he left high school, in 1947, he had saved $5,000. His mentor in investing was Benjamin Graham, author of the classic The Intelligent Investor. Buffett built his investment business on the principles of that book, the basics of which are: invest only in companies you understand, and invest for the long term. He once averred that the stock market did not exist; “It is there only as a reference to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish.” When asked once when he planned to retire, he replied: “About five to ten years after I die.” Some of the thoughts of the inestimable chairman:
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls-Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
We’ve done better by avoiding dragons rather than by slaying them.
A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a onetime huge but solvable problem.
The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.
It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.
Aphorisms via Mark Vernon
Posted on July 25, 2008
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Mark Vernon’s book, 42: Deep Thought on Life, the Universe, and Everything, is a collection of essayistic riffs spinning off from 42 different aphorisms. The book’s title is inspired, of course, by the supercomputer Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which comes up with the reply “42″ as the answer to, well, everything. Vernon, a writer, broadcaster and journalist, draws his aphorisms from an eclectic range of reading:
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. —James Branch Cabell
They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind. —G.K. Chesterton
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. —J.S. Mill
Vernon takes these words of wisdom and, through his essays, applies them to contemporary life, addressing issues like morality, politics and the environment. The result is a welcome combination of old and new. “The ancients loved aphorisms,” Vernon writes in the introduction. “They believed that although your real aim should be to fill your sails, reason, like a rudder, can steer you in the right direction. Socrates said that wisdom is not like water that can be poured from a jug into a basin. Life’s wisdom is manifest in habits and choices, passions and reflection.”
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More Aphorisms by Joseph F. Conte
Posted on July 24, 2008
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I first blogged about Joseph F. Conte’s aphorisms back in November of 2007. His most recent collection is Maxims for the Millennium, and in it he continues his aphoristic explorations, mostly in the manner of the great French moralists but with a dash of Karl Kraus-like sardonic humor thrown in. Speaking of Kraus, Conte quotes him to good effect in the introduction: “Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time writing essays.” Enough said. Here are some Maxims for the Millennium:
Everyone can teach something about anything to someone.
Learning never increases for those who do all the talking.
You can kill earnestness with jesting—but not jesting with earnestness.
It is difficult to insult people who do not have self-respect.
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On Ears
Posted on July 17, 2008
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The inner ear is a flowerbed inside a blacksmith’s shop. Down below the auditory canal—past the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup—sprout the hair cells of the cochlea, planted in tidy rows along the basilar membrane like geraniums in a window box. As the hammer and anvil pound sound waves into shape, the stirrup taps out the beat on the basilar membrane, which sets the hairs cells swaying like a summer breeze through a cornfield. Each of the hair cells’ undulations fires electrical signals to the brain, where we discern the cause of the commotion—a cymbal crash, for instance, or the soft exhalations of a child breathing. Other senses may rest, but the ear never sleeps. It is insomniac, always alert to the slightest pulses, awake to the faintest tremors. If, as English novelist George Meredith wrote, “Speech is the small change of silence,” then let’s hear it for the ear! A moment of silence, please, followed by three resoundingly soundless cheers.
A version of this abbreviated essay appeared in the July-August issue of Ode , on newsstands now.
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