Did you write it — Alan

Thanks. Yes, I wrote it, and it's from my sequel to the Rubaiyat (called 'Rubaiyat II'). I've been putting the quatrains in the threads as appropriate to the OP, and the unused or all will probably end up in my Omar Khayyam thread that has just begun (see 'Austin's Golden Rubaiyat' video there). More such videos on Vimeo.

The poetic form is described here:

The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.

(Ten syllable lines are about the most one can speak without taking a breath.)

Interesting themes there. — schopenhauer1

And so they went on, deeper, since, well they had to [do something]:

Upon all worlds our shadows are cast,
From our inner musings that are so vast,
While we savor the gladness of life.
We’re off back to the inn to hear what’s asked.

Oh why, why is there anything at all?
There has to be, for Nothing has no call.
No birth, nor creation, choice, or option?
Even the Great Wheel knows not its withal.

What happens, from there being no election,
Of that which hath no point for direction?
Everything happens, as it e’er changes,
Revealing all faces of complextion.

What becomes of this potential everything?
Anything, as all its possible rings.
What’s the information of All these things?
Nothing, so it e’er jitters, flutters, and sings.

What sense to it all, in that it must be?
What is the message of eternity?
The only missive of all time is being,
Its point is but that it cannot not be.

But what’s the base of the basis, as First,
The simplest from which all things fill their thirst?
The first, simple, fundamental monads
Compose complicates, uni-versed.

So, we’ve it wrong that the base is complex?
Yes, as wrong as opposites can expect,
For complexities are of e’er the less,
Of more and more underlying simplex.

Is future connected to the present?
Yes, and in more ways than you’d want it sent,
As the consistencies you might resent:
All future flowers from seeds of the present.

Fine, but not; you leave me with mystery.
What is going on here? For what purpose me?
You and it are the riddle that solves itself.
You are exactly ‘being’ in its spree.

The FitzGerald Enigma—of Improving Omar’s Quatrains

How is it that only Edward FitzGerald could write a superb Rubaiyat quatrain, even 115 of them (5 are from his notes), in the grand order of day into night, transmogrifying Khayyam, while no one else could/can come up with even one great one, even given that almost 159 years have gone by for so many to have done so, and with such a large Omar source reservoir? Score: Fitz: 115 World: 0.

Should we ask for one from every poet and then put them together to match FitzGerald? It seems unlikely, and even then Fitz still wins because he is only one and we are many. His first edition contained 75 quatrains right off of the bat.

How is it that FitzGerald other poetic works pale in comparison to the Rubaiyat? What rarest of muses made visitation once in all of history just once for the greatest poem of all time? Should we even try to credit ‘magic’?

When Nicholas’ alternate 'wine as the divine' interpretation raised FitzGerald’s ire, causing Edward’s old fire to blaze again, 35 quatrains were added to make the second edition of 110 quatrains in the main, along with a refutation of Nicholas’ sufistic renderings in the preface. How many more quatrains might have become if Fitz’s eyesight and foresight hadn’t diminished.

Instead, to consolidate and better project the energy of the Rubaiyat, 9 quatrains were suppressed in the third edition, making for a lower total of 101, which remained so for the fourth, the intent of these new editions being also to combat the pirated editions abroad that the world devoured.

The ‘muse’ was a conjunction of many rare events, as can be seen in the the history of FitzOmar’s Rubaiyat, as written up by so many scholars.

No one — whollyrolling

Think not that I am existent as ‘I’,
Or talk the talk and walk the walk of ‘I’,
For all’s of the IS; the Cosmos is I;
Where then, and what, who, and whence is this ‘I’?

Bless your soul with tongues of fire; Holy Spirit burn;
Leave no trace of man’s desire; Holy Spirit turn.
Oh, man, why detest thy constitution;
Doth thou think Nature has a lot to learn?

So Nature got it wrong, the pious say,
In man’s constitution, erring its essay,
Granting so many ways to go astray.
Well, then, Who, do they say, penned this world’s play?

In the mosque, they say ‘God’ as if its true.
‘Faith’ in their wishes is behind what they chant.

Only a Fool would blame His own creations
For the taint therein—of His poor craftsmanship.
So, rejoice, there’s no Maker of Man; these ‘flaws’
Provide for interesting character types!

The preachers claim ‘perhaps’ as fact and truth.

Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
Yet, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.

What’s not established can’t be addressed,
For it’s ‘invisible’, such as spirits.
Thus, a belief in a stated unknown,
As ‘faith’, can’t be shown, much less known.

We are not robots who just do stuff, but ask why, analyze, compare, look at underlying metaphysical and epistemological and ethical underpinnings. — schopenhauer1

As in this lost haunt of my imagination where philosophers gather:

Back to the tavern we creep, its drinks calling,
Where the inquisitive sit, pondering.
One and another says, We’ve more questions,
For we’ve all been born here without asking.

The scroll writes itself, my wondering friends,
Having not any plan unto its ends,
In this life borrowed from death that it lends,
So, we know not how the veil weaves and wends.

What can we do, as thrust into life?

Life’s object must be mental happiness,
For thoughts are all we can think, feel, or sense.
Aim for this euphoric state of well-being,
For true paradise is a state of mind.

Happiness is a way of life that celebrates
A living aliveness—that then opens gates
To further adventure, friendship, and delights,
To joy, success, triumph, and greater heights.

Who can we blame for our selves unmended,
For base nature’s ingredients blended?
You could invent ‘Allah’, as the baker,
Who disowns His recipe intended.

No. What's this wonderland? I'm baffled here.
What sends me though the ages, to my bier?
You’ve near said: death sifts the best from the rest;
And, overall, you cannot not be here.

What my life’s narrative that I hie through?
No matter it, for any one will do.
What’s left, then, in all common, as the clue?
We’re back to being—experiencing a ‘who’.

Where am I going? Am I important?
You’re going nowhere; here is your life’s plant.

The one who shocked the olden philosophic word to its foundations:

Only a fragment of his 'On Nature' survived, but it was the best part.

Through the Rubàiyàt, I sense enchantment,
Essence distilled in the translator’s scent.
Recomposed from Khayyàm’s dust and spirit,
Potent elixirs escape interment!

— Omar Khayyam’s Times —

The Shariah (Islamic Law)

The central debate in the Islamic world
Is and has always been between
Those who support reason and discourse and those
Who rely on a strictly legal understanding of Islam.

The former is interested in dialogue
And the latter in dictating
The nature and the terms of that dialogue.

— Medhi Aminrazami


The voices of the orthodoxy gained prominence
At the court of Caliph Al-Mutiwakkil,
Who opposed intellectual debate
Concerning religious matters.

It took another century
For the orthodox theologians
To consolidate their position and to present
The legalistic and orthodox version of Islam
As the official version.

This allowed such jurists as Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal
To formally charge philosophers and theologians,
Particularly the Mu‘tazilītes, with heresy.

With freedom of expression substantially curtailed,
The spirit of rationalism was replaced
By the Ash‘arites orthodox theology,
Which emphasized faith as opposed to reason.

Omar Khayyam lived in the 12th century
When the glorious days of intellectual debate
And discursive reasoning in Persia had come to an end.

Philosophers like Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna),
Zakariyā Rāzī, and Bīrūnī,
All of whom were once venerated figures,
Became symbols of apostasy and heresy.

In his Kharidat al-qasr, ‘Imad al-Din Katib Isfahani
Says about Khayyam,
“There was no one like him in his own time
And he had no peer in the science
Of astronomy and philosophy”.

"Do something about it" is the Cosmos doing us. Either we attend to existence or die as our 'attendance'.

It depends what you mean by one thing. If you take it to the bottom or to the top all things inevitably end up being one thing. — whollyrolling

Reality would be wholly rolling as the One Thing continuing/transitioning/transforming.

If consciousness has no causal role and is merely epiphenomenal, what is the point of the experience of pain? Why would our brains be "programmed" to feel pain if it has no causal function and everything is simply deterministic? — Michael McMahon

I would surmise that the result in consciousness of the brain's prior analysis has a usage to the brain, else it wouldn't have evolved. Thus, the internal method/language of qualia is used by the brain to globally broadcast its recent product so that more of the wider brain might attend to its implications, that presuming the brain may have many separate areas coming up with their own figurings/suggestions.

So, there has to be some use to consciousness; however, the decisions/thoughts seemingly carried out instantly therein were already finished and done beforehand. The subconscious analysis takes 300-500 milliseconds, which is a delay, along with the speed of light delay, which is quite short.

Could you have then picked B? If you say “yes I could have controlled the influence to pick A and still picked B” I would then again ask “why didn’t you”. This final “why didn’t you” you obviously don’t know the answer to. You can do this for any choice — khaled

This is good. When other considered choices don't come in first, the no 'if' or could have' options didn't make it in actuality, and so they become a fantasy.

he imitates his master, — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Well, there goes integrity, imitating a Bad Role Model.

Wouldn’t the universe be the one thing that exists? — NOS4A2

Yes, the Totality of what is real as a Whole would be the one and only permanent
thing. There could not be any spacers of impossible Nothingness within it. Einstein and Rovelli suggest that, as such, all is field.

My friend and I discussed it further:

This 'Eterne' or 'World' (as referred to in the old days) is the one necessary being (not Being).

No thing can lie outside of the World, for if any such thing were real, it would be included in the World. Thus, the world could not have been caused by anything outside of it. Nor could the World have caused itself, for that which does not exist cannot cause anything. Accordingly, the World had no beginning and will have no end; thus it is the Eterne, or what 'IS'. QED.

However, the World is in continuous transition. Indeed, the idea of causation comes from the fact that a small portion of the world seems from our perspective to change or move in constant conjunction with certain things that preceded it.

One may object that if the World is in continuous transition, it does not exist as anything in particular, not even for an instant, for logically there can be no instants where the progress of transitions is perfectly seamless temporally.

But what then is the basis for the conclusion that the World necessarily exists? Something must stitch together all the continuous transitions to account for the world as a unitary existent. The world must somehow remain the same even as it changes. But how is this possible?

The answer is that the World must have a kind of eternal essence that dictates the kinds of, albeit not the number of, its transitions. This limitation in kind is what we experience from our point of view as the laws of nature.

This condition of the World is, in a way, analogous to a topological space that is capable of an infinite number of forms that are however subject to the limitation that any form must be returnable to some original form.

It seems right that the Eterne/IS/World, having no possible point for input, can't be anything specific or particular, it then, presumably being Everything, either potentially, as in presentism, or somehow, all at once, in a superposition, as in eternalism or as in the quantum realm.

'Everything' sounds really Great; however, note that its total information content would be the same as the impossible Nothing, that is, zero. Welcome to the Library of Babel that contains all possible books.

You will be back, again and again, but you won't remember the previous.

thinking that such a moral monster is good — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Made these today:

God thought of, planned, designed, and implemented
Human Nature—angelic to demented,
And in His recipe’s span those expressed
Unsurprisingly had to be reinvented.

Shirking responsibility, The Blamer
Cited humans as the culprits of his err,
And cast them out of Eden, to this day—
This evil being God’s own Original Sin.

The Great Flood killed all but Noah’s near clan,
God acting against His own 6th Command,
Those dead being of God’s intended nature—
Yet another myth-take in rainbow land.

Yet, there was no Genesis of Man, as is,
In modern form, so recently, by a Wiz,
Nor a separate animal life line,
For He flunked out of evolution’s quiz.

I think the problem is the notion that things are “made of” something, and are not themselves something. — NOS4A2

The Eternal Basis would be unmakeable and unbreakable, as ungenerated and deathless.

But classical mechanics is completely deterministic. So your will is either completely deterministic or completely random. I don’t think that leaves any room for “free”. — khaled

I do know some seemingly random air-heads, but that is just a joke here, but the pearl of the joke is that 'completely random' would be a total disaster, yet, that's what the opposite of 'determined' would be, as 'not determined'.

Now that the other shoe drops, as 'random', and to boot, even harms the will, its saving grace drains away, and the foot now stinks, and thus one rushes to embrace the first shoe kicked away, that of 'determinism', for probably no better reason than 'free will' sounds like a good thing to have to not be a robot, because then one celebrates that a fixed will grants consistency and order, over disorder.

I would also challenge someone to define what “free will” is in a way that doesn’t just boil down to “random will” — khaled

The greatest minds have tried.

What makes it a freely willed decision is that I made it; I wrote what I wanted to write. — Relativist

'Freely willed' is the base definition of 'free will' being that the fixed will able to operate and do its willing true to itself when not coerced otherwise; however, 'fixed will' is dynamic in that it can change to a new and better (or worse, if criminal) fixed will via learning and experience.

random will — khaled

Thankfully,

whereas a single particle exhibits a degree of randomness, in systems incorporating millions of particles averaging takes over and, at the high energy limit, the statistical probability of random behaviour approaches zero. In other words, classical mechanics is simply a quantum mechanics of large systems. — Wiki

This looks like it would be good to watch on acid. — S

Or just pot and Persia-fumes, so the colors don't come out and grab you—pulling you into your big 4K TV.

to actually fall upward — Childish Daydream

I fell up the stairs of an escalator once, but that probably doesn't count.

Another time, I lay flat on the earth at night, looking up at the stars and pretending that up was down; I had to grab on to the grass to keep myself up.

This is over my head. I suspect I’m not the only one confused about it, though. — Noah Te Stroete

Blowing your mind…

The sun is not the same sun as it was a trillionth of a second ago, although to us a semblance of the ‘sun’ remains.

There are, strictly speaking, no objects that are identical with themselves over time, and so the temporal sequence probably remains open.

Nature is then no longer seen as clockwork, but only as a ‘possibility gestalt’, the whole world occurring anew each moment; however, the deeper reality from which the world arises, in each case, acts as a unity in the sense of an indivisible ‘potentiality’, which can perhaps realize itself in many possible ways, it not being a strict sum of the partial states.

It appears to us, though, that the world consists of parts that have continued on from “a moment ago”, and thus still retain their identity in time; yet, matter likely only appears secondarily as a congealed potentiality, a congealed gestalt, as it were.

(Maybe)

The light of Heav’n did the Earth illumine,
When He shaped human nature’s acumen.
Temptations He then placed everywhere,
But He’ll punish us for being human!

I fear not death, Heaven, or even Hell,
For death is only life’s natural knell,
And Heaven and Hell are within myself;
The one thing I fear is not living well!

So if there are ‘jumps’ from one discrete state to another, what does that say about causality? It seems that at the quantum level, cause and effect break down, no? — Noah Te Stroete

It's confusing, for in quantum mechanics, there's no underlying objective state, as all is in a superposition until some interaction occurs, for which we understand the probability of the result, as unitary, meaning that the probabilities add up to 1. They say that some kind of wave function, either as real or just as a math tool, goes along deterministically until the wave function collapses, giving the probabilistic result. All of our computers work, so QM is telling us something right.

Or, maybe at every Planck instant the universe is created anew.

Philosophically, I'd think that randomness has to be the bedrock of reality, but, upwards of that there would be deterministic cause and effect when possible, it the operation doesn't touch the bedrock.

Is there a Planck length of relative motion or time as there is a Planck length in spacial extension? — Noah Te Stroete

There is a Plank time, the shortest time in which anything can happen, and there are zillions of these times a second. Presumably, the discreteness of this and other quanta indicates a digital universe, casting Einstein's analog continuum into doubt—but it could still very well approximate a continuum.

I think stuff just happens and "cause" is just an overlay we superimpose on the world. — T Clark

As we've kind of measured, there may be trillions of tiny changes in tiny constituents every second, although the semblances containing them, such as the sun or a tree or a rock last very long. Perhaps events happen, which we take as stuff, and the laws of nature underlie.

It appears that there is such a continual transitioning of the 'World' that not anything in particular can remain the same, even for an instant, or the instant is incredibly short. To me, this indicates something very energetic. It's hard to specify.

Right now, I come down on the side that it doesn't make sense to think things are caused, although I can't really give a satisfactory reason yet. — T Clark

How about a 'transitioning', via laws.

Or just the one big effect of the Big Bang continuing? Our local cause and effect analysis has to draw a boundary, as a cutting off?

Do what you can to make it sooner as they are still hurting many. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Yes, I do, but some are so taken by the idea that I'll have to wait for them to die. The younger generation seems more amenable to change.

The Great Flood is particularly ugly.

Of course, the mythical, biblical 'God' idea is doomed, and is heading toward dead. 'God' has no character and so it is a rather sad situation, for to accept is to approve.

Would there be any way to prove or test this idea? (saying "there is only one reality" is a type of reasoning but a long way from actual evidence) Is it any different in actual practice from "there are many possibilities but only one is actualized"? I mean, wouldn't I act the same either way? — ZhouBoTong

It's tough. We can't run the universe again to see it anything different happened, and even if we could, the difference might have mostly been at the beginning where some 'random' happening might have gone a long way, or way later on, some unwashed out 'random' held some big sway, but randomness hurts the will and so we don't care much about that something could be different via randomness in the re-run.

We can, though, say that what did happen, non randomly, trumps as actuality the claims such as "should have", making those to be of a fantasy world stance.

I actually think that everyone is queer, however. Identifying as such is also a partial means to promote the theory which I see as being mostly positive. — thewonder

Yes, probably, as not 100% all one way, just as many might have some amount of any condition, such as depression, but not really notice, since it doesn't exceed some threshold.

Identify as being queer, but functionally straight? Lol. — S

@thewonder is a good person here and keeps the discussions going, plus he is being forthright.

There can be degrees of 'problems' with the masculinization of the brain. All embryos begin as female.

vagino-Americans — T Clark

Shey might not go for that, plus the 'o' is kind of a male ending, such as with 'filipino' (vs filipina) which still would be good for males who have converted, leaving 'vaginas' for true females. Yes, men are 'dicks'.

I don't mean to assume that you're unaware of them, but I think that you have just rediscovered the Spivak pronouns. — thewonder

Yes, I was unaware; so, the rediscoveries might indicate that they would be useful.

A group of all females could be called 'gnyos'.

Lately, I hear that there are 57 genders. Where does it ever end?

you guys — thewonder

In the New Grammar School:

Genderless Pronouns

Since there are no gender neutral pronouns in the English Language, how do we refer to antecedents whose gender is irrelevant, without resorting to clumsy constructions such as “he or she” (or should it be “she” or “he”), or by using the generic “he” and thereby maligning women, or by tiresomely repeating the original noun over and over.

We’ll have to invent the gender neutral pronouns.

But they won’t have a chance of getting used if they don’t sound right.

Right, they would have to be different enough from what they’re replacing to be distinct, but similar enough to suggest a ready parallel which could easily catch on. So, they’d still have to be a single syllable, for example, but without suggesting sounds already used for other common simple words, like the long vowel sound of “a” (the article “a”), “i” (the pronoun “I”), “o” (the exclamation “oh”), “u” (the pronoun “you”), and “y” (the adverb “why”), all of which, of course, are already taken.

Sounds tough.

It’s so tough that no such common gender pronouns have ever caught on, although many have been suggested, such as, for the third person subjective singular, “it”, singular “they”, “heesh”, and “thon” (the one). Yet, the problem of the third person subjective singular has been solved in the written word.

What is the solution?

“S(he)” or “s/he”.

Yes, I’ve seen it used; but of course orally it would still sound like “she” or “he or she”. What do you suggest?

Perhaps we can use the fact that “he” and “she” share the long “e” sound. “He or she” can simply be replaced by “e”; luckily, it’s the only unused long vowel sound left for use as a word of its own.

Let’s try it.

“The writer must carefully proofread what e writes.”

“After God created the Earth in six days, E rested on the seventh.”
“Everyone likes pizza, doesn’t e? (They sure do.)”

“E who hesitates is lost.”
“Every one of us knows e is fallible.”

“Everyone is invited, whether e is a member or not.”
“The quick-walker down the morning path gazes, to where e will be when the next trail blazes.”

Sounds good. Now, what about the third person objective singular. I don’t want to have to say “him or her”.

Since “him” and “her” have dissimilar sounds, we’ll have to somehow combine them, and perhaps utilize the fact that they each start with the same letter “h”, by either retaining it or dropping it, although we certainly don’t want to replace it.

How about “himer” or “herim” or “her-him”?

Too long. But that gives me an idea. How about “erm”, using this line of reasoning: “her-him” -> “herim” -> “erim” -> “erm”? I would have preferred “herm” but that’s a man’s name.

“The new class president gets elected tomorrow, so I’ll leave it up to erm.”
“Everyone came and I was glad to see erm.”

“Let everyone ask ermself to consider the implications of the lack of the epicene pronoun.”
“Either John or Mary should bring a schedule with erm.”

Maybe we could even shorten it to “em”, like “everyone came and I was glad to see em.”
I wish we could use it but “em” is also a contraction of “them”. Too bad, but maybe “erm” will catch on.

OK, maybe, but what about the third person possessive singular; I don’t want to have to say “his or hers”. I know we can’t use “hiser” or “their”, which is plural, although lots of people say wrong things like “One must watch their language” or “Does anyone want to read their best poem to us?”

The wrong usage of “their” gives me an idea. Perhaps we can yet use its wrongness to our advantage, since it has come to sound almost right. Since we can’t use the combination “ern” from “his” and “her” because “ern” conflicts with “earn”, how about another approach: let’s use “eir” and play off of the groundwork laid by good sound of the misuse of the plural “their”.

Let’s try it.

“Who dropped eir ticket?”

“Would each student please hang up eir coat upon entering the classroom.”
“One must watch eir language.”

“Does anyone want to read eir best poem to us?” And you know what the best thing about “e”, “erm”, and “eir”; something great that we didn’t even notice?

What is it?

They all start with the letter “e”. That will unify the set and make it easier to remember.

Hey, you’re right. Thanks, I’ll use that as a selling point.


Manglish

English, for all its large vocabulary, has some missing words. For one, there is no personal pronoun which means “he or she” in the epicene case (gender-neutral or non-gender-specific case). If there were, then we could use it when the gender was irrelevant or unknown. Worse yet, the present solution, he, is of the masculine case, although ‘he’ is used generically. Still, this causes males to be more often imaged in the reader’s or listener’s mind, thus rendering females less visible. A similar problem exists for “him or her” and “his or hers”. Substituting brand new words is not an easy task, or such words would have presented themselves through common usage, for example, youse, all of you, and you-all (y’all) have filled in for the non distinct plural form of you (used as both singular and plural).

Another problem is the gap left by corrupted feminine nouns. For example, ‘bachelor’ is a respectable term for an unmarried male, but the feminine counterparts of bachelor all had connotations (spinster, divorcee, maiden, old maid, widow), so much so that females had to adopt ‘bachelorette’, but this is still a male derived word and is also diminutive. Fortunately, this problem has been solved with the introduction of female single, or ‘femgle’. Not really. The word ‘female’ even contains ‘male’, which I suppose is the biblical ‘of the male’, or else is was meant to be ‘fee-male’, as taking a woman out usually means there is a fee (just a joke), and ‘woman’ embraces ‘man’ in it. So, let us try to turn Manglish back into English, but then we’d have to reprint all the books!

Examples of the Problems:

Each one of us loves his mother.
The writer must carefully proofread what he writes.
All men are created equal.
Let’s ask each of the poets what he thinks is his best work.
Let everyone ask himself to consider the problem of the lack of the epicene pronoun.
Man, being a mortal, breast feeds his young.
Well, Jane, you’re a real handyman.
After God created the Earth in six days, He rested on the seventh.
Mrs. Robert Jones is our new chairman.
Everyone likes pizza, doesn’t he? (They sure do.)
This is the house whose roof leaks.
She gave her jewels.
It’s time you (you-all) came to visit us.
Would everyone please hang up their coat.

Summary

E, eir, erm; ermself are certainly the mainstays of the new personal pronoun set, as they are the ones used most often, being in the third person. It is a fortunate coincidence that e, eir, erm; ermself all start with “e”. This unifies the set and makes them easier to remember. E is also the only vowel sound yet unused for an important word. ‘Eir’ suggests a parallel to “their”. ‘Erm’ combines ‘him’ and ‘her’.

The Final Words

Each person must watch eir words when e writes or speaks. Everyone(now plural) must try their best to be fair to both men and wym. The writer is urged to remind ermself to rewrite eir books and substitute the new pronouns so that fems can be imaged as well as males. Wimyn should then see sheir status improve. Shey can then truly say that all gen are created equal and that every hume is fairly represented in language. All genkind will benefit. Thank yous for yur interest in this subject. However, the pronoun ‘which’ is still without a possessive case, and therefore English is still a language whose missing words need attention.

(I have a full chart somewhere, if I can find it.)

Also:

Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
Be more or less specific.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Avoid clichés like the plague—they’re old hat.
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
Like, don’t use the word ‘like’, a lot, like in this sentence.
Foreign words are not apropos.
Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
No sentence fragments.
Also, too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
Its important to be careful about it—about it’s meaning.

If no one practices getting the pronouns correct then they will never become easy to use colloquially. — thewonder

When gender is unknown,
Some pronouns can’t be said,
So, for he or she, use “e”,

As for him or her, it’s “erm”,
And for his or hers, use “eir”.

As for a singular you, that is it;
For the plural, use “you-all”.

From my Rubaiyat II:

The universe’s mantle binds us worn—
Tears feeding the river on which we’re borne.
Hell’s but an ember of our senseless fears;
Heaven’s the rose-breath of opening morn.

At this hour of the dawning; up, flower of thy kind!
With rubies in crystal, come gladden the mind;
For this moment we borrow from Time on the wing
Full oft wilt thou seek nor again wilt thou find.

Morning springs us over the wasteland’s brink,
And on time’s sand we’ll the oasis drink.
Life’s strange caravan through the desert winds,
Back toward Nothing; drink—afore the lights sink.

We who dally on the soft river grass,
Drinking each others morning breath, alas,
While the flowered Persia-fumes waft about,
Are free and saved from the mosque’s tiring mass.

Night’s mystical flight of fulfilled desires
Heralds the day-star, as darkness retires;
The Sun subsumes the stars, fire-paints the dawn,
And captures the Sultan’s holy spires.

An Unreal Experience

I climbed the Himalayas, long ago,
While traveling for the Army DIA to be,
And complained to the wise Lama
Up there that life could be hell.

He said “Get lost!
Go make a heaven of hell and then me tell.
The door is never shut on the prison cell,
So, why would you ever want to stay inside it
When the exit is always wide open.”

A week passed, then a month, and then 31 years,
And I found myself at a Buddhist-run cafe,
In New Hamburg, NY, and decided to sit there
Through most of the summer,
Having just retired from IBM,
And becoming as free as a neutrino.

The cafe was run by the Buddha Girls
From the monastery on Shafe Road,
Home to one of only two Lamas
In the entire United States,
And the only one on the east coast.

The cafe was called
“Himalayas on the Hudson”,
And the Lama often came to dine there,
With his entourage of higher-ups and bodyguards.

Because I was there often,
I got to know the old Lama,
His bodyguards ever retreating,
And so I taught him how to do
High fives and low fives and such,
And we began to talk about
The connectedness that underlies all things,
The reaching of which meditative state
Through the removal of all thoughts
Being the very heart of Buddhism.

In addition, I always gave him the weather
For the rest of the day and for the next day,
Always saying that
It would become sunny if it was raining,
And that it would be still sunny
If it was already sunny,
And if it was really raining heavily,
That it was always sunny on the inside.

I remember,
Thinking upon first meeting him
That “here he is”, the great one,
And so I have a chance to ask
A deep question of him,
Without having to go back over to
Tibet or India and climb up a mountain,
So, I pointed to an article
In the newspaper that said,
“We may never know who won
The Presidential election, Bush or Gore”
And so I asked him for his wisdom on the matter.

Well, he thought for only a second or two and said,
“Who cares!”, and such it sunk into me a bit later
That this was a great wisdom, indeed.

The Cafe workers didn’t wear the flowing gold
And reddish robes that the Buddhists wore,
But wore regular clothes and even had long hair,
And so, many of the hectic type customers,
Unknowing of their servers’ Buddhism,
Wondered at the peace and joy
That the workers radiated,
As if they were in some sort of serenity field,
Which I suppose the workers were,
Plus they being chosen for their outgoingness.

I talked with them about string theory,
The theory that the differing vibrations
Of really small ‘strings’ gives rise
To all of the elementary particles and forces,
And, so, we related this to all that is absolute
And fundamental beneath this projection
Of reality in which we live out life dreams.

Buddhism is not a religion, but a way of life,
And Buddhists can still have friends,
Outside jobs, fun, sex, and whatnot,
Although some of them spend a lot of time
On the inner world, which, like meditation,
Can only be known as “not what you think”.

Summer soon died in his sleep one night,
And so Time hurled its waves ever onward

Until even Old Autumn had passed on.

The cafe had now been rented out,
Having become an American-Korean restaurant
Run by Sin-Ha and Su-Nee,
Although still owned by the Buddhists.

Winter had snowed us in.

In late spring, the Cafe, still my ‘office’,
Announced that it was closing down,
Right away, for it could talk,
Although its Garden of Peace and Serenity,
Surrounded on three sides by 30-foot rocks,
The “Himalayas”, was still open,
And so I figured that it was time
To move my “office” outdoors,
Not that I would ever do any W-O-R-K there,
For that is a four-letter word to a retired person.

Then, miracles of miracles, that day,
After saying good-bye to the Koreans
And taking home 50 eggs
And many bags of chocolate chip cookies,
I went back to the Cafe garden
To sit under an umbrella table in the rain,
And there was the old Lama himself,
Sitting there, all alone,
Having just shown the building
To someone who might lease it.

I hadn’t seen him in six months,
For he had been off to other continents.

He gave me a medium high five
And I told him that the sun would be out tomorrow,
And that it was always sunny on the inside.
He said, “Thanks, old friend.”

“Re-leasing the building?”

“Yes, probably, but we’d like sell it.
Perhaps Buddhists shouldn’t be in business.”

“Well, it worked as a kind of outreach,
When you ran it,
And the Koreans liked it for a while.”

“True.”

“How’s the new golden temple going?”

“It’s about half completed.
We need another three million dollars.”

“Hmmm.”

“Yes, I know.
Perhaps Buddhists shouldn’t be looking for money,
Nor building a golden temple that’s not really real.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that this world isn’t really real,
That we shouldn’t worry about the rain
Or about life’s tribulations.”

“That’s what we believe.
Tell me, does that work?”

“Well, um, does not life’s existence
Look, seem, and act just the way it would,
In every detail, as if it were really real?”

“Yes, indeed. Exactly.
That’s what they say makes for the great illusion.”

“I hate to say this,
But a ‘difference’
That makes no difference
Is no difference.”

“I think you’re onto something.”

The 'God' who is supposed to be everywhere shows up nowhere.

I like Borges. Have you ever played the game Myst? This isn't terribly like Myst at all, but I had just thought of that for some reason. — thewonder

Played it over 25 years ago; it has a book in it at the start.