keeping the contract

老子:「「道德經」」: 第七十九章

和大怨，必有餘怨﹔
報怨以德，安可以為善。
是以聖人執左契，而不責於人。
有德司契，無德司徹。
天道無親，常與善人。

Laozi's Daodejing, Le Guin Rendition, Chapter 79

After a great enmity is settled
some enmity always remains.
How to make peace?
Wise souls keep their part of the contract
and don't make demands on others.
People whose power is real fulfill their obligations;
people whose power is hollow insist on their claims.

The Way of heaven plays no favorites.
It stays with the good.


i post this excerpt because it lays out succinctly why i have been no 聖人 recently. instead of keeping the contract, i made demands. and even this post is proving that i 無德, because if i had virtue i wouldntve invoked these old words. or at least not with this ulterior, less than 德 motive... i know i am not 聖, and i hope i am not thoughtless - ordinary is good enough:


老子:「道德經」: 第四十一章

上士聞道，勤而行之﹔
中士聞道，若存若亡﹔
下士聞道，大笑之。
不笑不足以為道。

Laozi's Daodejing, Le Guin Rendition, Chapter 41

Thoughtful people hear about the Way
and try hard to follow it.
Ordinary people hear about the Way
and wonder onto it and off it.
Thoughtless people hear about the Way
and make jokes about it.
It wouldn't be the Way
if there weren't jokes about it.

quotes

"it's a ... what you call ...
not a synagoge...
...
...
oh! ... a synonym,
right a synonym
[akward silence]"

"who gave the iron curtain speech,
truman? fdr?
[akward silence]"

"what's fdr, a republican?
[akward silence]"

consciousness

today i woke up really early. so early it was 3pm yesterday.

for the past month ive pretty muchve been nocturnal, going to bed when the sun rises. my parents kept bugging me about it, but alack! i couldnt bring myself to wake up earlier - its my secret (not really) weakness.

but aha! i remembered that there are always two opposite, yet (somewhat) equal solutions to every problem except when the coefficients are imaginary. (hows that for, metaphorically, mixing metaphores!)

suddenly i remembered the wisdom of the crazy t-shirt guy at MAA-AMS:

When life gets complex, multiply it by its conjugate.

so when the good shows were all replaced by fraiser or seinfeld and other weird retro shows i dont understand, instead of turning over an falling asleep, i turned over and didnt fall asleep - oh!

but eheu! at 6am, i could ignore the sunrise no more as sunlight streamed into my room between the drapes. and i felt my strength began to waver... infandum! sunlight... my bane! must resist... must reach energy drink in time. but euge! dad bought a 120 pack at costco! victoria mihi est! vivo noctem aliam aspicere!

in nuntio alio (soloecismus?)... Gmail ineptissima est quamquam pudat tam acutulam se esse... delirationem Gmailis didici ante diem septimum hodie, cum Gmail conaretur utilem nimium esse: emailabam Magistram Mazzolam marathonam tres horas et quadraginta septem minutas currere. autem Gmail pudat III:XLVII significare me congressum decima hora habere... hahahae!!