Maximizing Time

A Maxim:  gen. A proposition, esp. one which is pithily worded, expressing a general truth drawn from science or experience. OED.

One appealing aspect of fairy tales is the magic word, the fantasy that simply by speaking it we get something done, like Yahweh making the world.

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Our younger selves schedule our days in the morning and dream of what we will accomplish. By evening, we can recapture only vaguely that naïve vision of clean stables in just one day.

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A word is a metaphor: it is both the thing and not the thing. Language simultaneously brings us the world and holds it at a distance: we float in the balance.

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Self-pity is comfort food for the inert mind, the pity-patty of little feat.

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It is not so hard to set priorities within a frame of reference—which vegetable to plant first, which book to read next—but since we do not plant books or read vegetables we need a frame frame in which to set priority priorities.

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Fleeing to imaginary worlds or imaginary futures or the imaginary past—where we can do nothing—we create gardens where over and over we cannot eat of any tree.

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We make lists to remember what to do in the complex web of the present; we keep journals to remember what we have done in the simplifying web of the past.

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Sometimes I write in my journal about writing in my journal. Here I write about writing about writing in my journal. But it's turtles all the way down.