Friday, November 9, 2007

Common Wisdom

1. Each culture has a common wisdom; a set of resident survival axioms.

2. One such aspect of common wisdom is that a writer, actor, artist should have some fall-back occupation with which to secure a living when writing, acting, sculpting, photography (but not wedding, bat- or bar-mitzvah photography) fail to produce.

3. Book keeping, sales, teaching, and law are frequent choices for such occupation-as-sugar-Daddy vectors.

4. Another tenet of common wisdom is that government, if run like business, would be more efficient and honorable because all business is efficient and honorable.

5. Another tenet of common wisdom, at least Better Business Bureau Wisdom is that reform will drive those rascally politicians from the temple, er, from the chambers of House and Senate, the better to accommodate the business persons.

6. Another tenet still: You can indeed fool most of the people all the time.

7. You can certainly fool a working majority of Democrats most of the time.

8. No use worrying about Republicans because they have successfully fooled themselves and will not brook outside interference, even if it is good.

9. When religion doesn't work, people turn to politics.

10. When politics don't work, people turn to religion.

11. When catch-22 doesn't work, people begin to see virtues in writing long, compulsive narratives.

12. "I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. "

13. Who said that?

14. Nick Carraway, who only became the narrator of Gatsby at the last minute, just after Gatsby got to be called Gatsby.

15. Fitzgerald did not run his writing like a business (although after Zelda's sanatorium bills began coming in, he did write a great many short stories ( not the least of which was "Bernice Bobs Her Hair")for a great deal of money.

16. Nor did he run by prayer or majority rule.

17. You can tell I have spent the better part of today in a meeting in which the primary agenda was designing a MFW curriculum.

18. It did not occur to me at the time to consider prayer or business practices.

4 comments:

Lori Witzel said...

A drive-by "Amen, brutha!"

Yours truly,
Kicking Around in Blue Tin Shadows

John Eaton said...

Bring the word, Brother Pastor.

Angels rush in where fools can never go,

John :)

R.L. Bourges said...

14. Nick Carraway instead of Gatsby... Now there's reason to pause and wonder about one's own choices of names...

x said...

I just tagged you for a meme on your poetry wisdom.