Apr 122010
The People waiting to vote in the aphorism contest
The People have spoken, but the result was a tie on very thin voting. This is what you get when you ask the People for an opinion. I discounted the “blue dog” aphorism because, despite all the proxy votes Gary emailed in, it’s not an aphorism. Pretty dog though.
dg
The co-winners are:
For Bard: An Aphorism”
Forsake not my love for suspect art
For ’tis less vain by far,
To leave the flames of fame unfanned
Than be left alone with self in hand.
Michele Irwin
AND
Donne was wrong: every man is an island, and without that saving strand of water between us we would all go mad.
Steven Axelrod
Your wonderfully housebroken pets are going to break their First Commandment.
That’s a laugh. When were my pets ever “wonderfully housebroken?”
dg
OK, I’ll concede the slight possibility that there may have been some irregularities in the voting. But I will not concede that “An aphorism is a blue dog tripping through the snow” is not an aphorism. It is an aphorism that contains a metaphor, but it is also a pithy statement about what aphorisms do. Cf:
An aphorism is a spotted cat peeing on our carpet.
But I genuinely liked the first, and of course you get all the credit. The image of a dog running, in all her canine innocence and exuberance, making that swishing, clicking sound, cutting tracks across a fresh field of snow, really engaged me and stuck with me for days. A statement is made about how aphorisms make us feel and how they change us, how they cut tracks across our quiet, undisturbed and unquestioned lives, the placid fabric of our society. Blue adds mysterious suggestion that makes the thing take a few more turns.
But its charm gets lost in the explanation.
oh, yes, but a charming and almost convincing explanation.
I was surprised by how difficult it was to come up with aphorisms– and then how, out of the blue, a bunch would pop into my mind. I imagine this gets easier with practice. Blog on!