Today I finally returned to the well-worn grooves of the Greenlake trail sporting my brand new 68% Polymide, 32% Spandex miniscus squeezer and began to pick my way along amongst the budding crocuses. This is what I brought away with me…

Those I am most likely to harm are firstly those I am most seriously in love with, and secondly those I most seriously love.

(For context see my “March 11, 2012” post below – which was actually written just a few weeks ago. It somehow got time-warped through the magic of that Interweb thingy.)

All in a moment or an age

The croc became predator

The mosquito a pest

All in a moment or an age

Tectonic plates began rubbing each other the wrong way

And sweat became labor and labor a penance

And woman first groaned in pain and fear and hope.

All in a moment or an age

The best of our voices went just a tad flat

If only to torment those of perfect pitch

The well-tempered klavier became a necessity

And piano tuners made the rounds of the concert halls.

All in a moment or an age

Engineers began to calculate tolerances

And bugs presaged debugging,

Pi ran to an infinity of decimals

And the very earth’s rotation slowed

At odds with its own orbit.

All in a moment or an age

Wax gathered in ears and the first nose soundly blew

Even as dreams suddenly expressed fear

And the iris demanded ever more lenses and the very scalpel’s edge.

All in a moment or age

Either the cosmological crack first appeared as tooth violated rind

Or perhaps rather when word obfuscated meaning.

Was the greater curse labor or rather that strange universal notion of a somehow more perfect existence?

This is a first attempt at conversation across the ages. It is a common enough theme drawn from only a few thousand jewels of wisdom, some very common knowledge, some, well, obscure. Such conversations exist in the cultural air we breathe. It is up to each of us to tune our ears and voices to harmony, discord, or sometimes the kind of discord that is strange harmony in disguise…

…wisdom begins in silence. – Robert Lawrence Smith, A QUAKER BOOK OF WISDOM

 

It is not wisdom to be only wise. – George Santayana, O WORLD, THOU CHOOSEST NOT

 

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. – Marilyn Vos Savant

 

If wisdom in the knowledge of the created world is lovely, how lovely is the wisdom which has created all things from nothing. – Anselm of Canterbury

 

…it is a great mistake to suppose that knowledge of itself brings understanding, still less wisdom. – A.J.P. Taylor, DEMOCRACY AND DIPLOMACY

 

Knowledge is power, but wisdom is strength. – Proctor Charlie

 

What is strength without a double share of wisdom… – John Milton, SAMSON AGONISTES

 

…while the wisdom of Man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of Nature constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing. – Edwin A. Abbott, FLATLAND, A ROMANCE OF MANY DIMENSIONS

 

The beginning of understanding is when, after asking why, we become silent. – Robert Lawrence Smith, A QUAKER BOOK OF WISDOM

 

…Wisdom’s self oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where, with her best nurse Contemplation, She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings. – John Milton, COMUS

 

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more. – William Cowper, THE WINTER WALK AT NOON

 

I discover wisdom in exposing our common errors. – Proctor Charlie

 

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, ESSAYS AND ENGLISH TRAITS

 

What’s wisdom itself but table-talk? – Herman Melville, THE CONFIDENCE MAN

 

Wisdom sends us to childhood. – Blaise Pascal, PENSEES

 

The bearing and training of a child is woman’s wisdom. – Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

I have met fools and idiots, and they are happy in their idiocy, even with straw in their hair. – Neil Gaiman, TRIGGER WARNING

 

…oft we see cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. – William Shakespeare, ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

 

…don’t go searching for a mermaid… If you don’t know how to swim – Shel Silverstein, THE MERMAID

 

It is not the folly of the man which brings about [his] fall, it is his wisdom. – G.K. Chesterton, HERETICS

 

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. – Samuel Johnson

 

…the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. – The Apostle Paul, FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

 

If only you would keep quiet, it would be a sign of wisdom! – The Prophet Job

 

The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie. – William Shakespeare, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

 

Where is the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we’ve lost in information? – T.S. Eliot

 

Wisdom comes not by getting it right, but rather from getting it wrong enough times. – Proctor Charlie

 

…wisdom can be painful. – Neil Gaiman, TRIGGER WARNING

 

…with much wisdom comes much sorrow – The Teacher, ECCLESIASTES

 

Is not the love of Wisdom a practice of death? – Plato

 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; – The Preacher, PROVERBS

 

Fear is a bad counselor. – Count Nikolaus Szecsen von Temerin

 

…fear sometimes is wisdom… – Barbara W. Tuchman. THE GUNS OF AUGUST

 

The brave man’s folly — that is life’s wisdom. – Maxim Gorky

 

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other. – Reinhold Niebuhr

 

It isn’t often that we get to use the same words of wisdom more than once. – Doug Murren

 

…wisdom is in truth worth nothing. – Plato, THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES