that's what public service is all about:

small, incremental change every day. teddy roosevelt once said, "far and away the best prize that life has to offer is a chance to work hard at work worth doing"...

now, go find your team and get to work

Heidegger, were he alive today

would be horrified if asked to tweet.

you never feel completely sad

or completely happy. you just feel kind of satisfied with your products and then you die

hast thou seen the down in the air?

when wanton blasts have tossed it?
or the ship on the sea,
when rudder winds have crossed it?
hast thou mark'd the crocodile weeping,
or the foxes sleeping?
or hast thou view'd the peacock in his pride,
or the dove by his bride,
when he courts for lechery?

oh so fickle, oh so vain, oh so false, so false is she!

health and safety

when a volcano goes off, it incinerates the careless and cautious alike.

Iron

a man should be encouraged to stand on his own two feet. yes, we help people, of course we help people - but for those who can do, they must just get up and do! and if something is wrong, they shouldn't just whine about it, they should get in there and do something about it - change things!

wear sunscreen

accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise. politicians will philander. you, too, will get old. and when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

respect your elders.

It's difficult

to reach across the aisle when the width and position of the aisle are in dispute.

I'm in love with you

every time I look at your face or even remember it, it wrecks me

without responsibility

opportunity can be wasted or distorted; without opportunity all the responsibility in the world is meaningless. we need the ladders to climb, the courage and responsibility to climb them, and the support of others to help us on our way.

the immensely rapid advance

in the exploitation of American economic resources has meant throughout the history of the United States, despite recurrent crises, a prospect of very high profits for the successful business adventurer, and this prospect has bred in the American people a speculative temper of a kind that exists nowhere else in anything like the same degree.

this temper has contributed greatly to the instability of the American business system and has exaggerated its repercussions on the rest of the world.

grandma, I've been unruly

in my dreams
and with my speech
drill little holes into my eyelids
that I might see you
that I might see you when I sleep

the starting point

of progressive politics has always been the view that every voice, however powerless, however marginalised, sometimes however misguided, has the equal right to be heard. if equality starts anywhere, it must start here, from the grounding assumption that a nation is nothing but its people, a democracy is nothing but its citizens and that every voice counts the same, has an equal right to be heard.

sometimes the voice of the people can be uncomfortable, sometimes worse than that, but each of us has to make a profound choice: either we trust the people or we don't.

yesterday I woke up

sucking a lemon

everything
in its right place

occupy

merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid

the point is:

it's very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you're doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. and if you can't think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn't need to be done.

my shadow gazes up to the sky

I was falling
as all the flowers are dying
and I hope that you'll come one day
and find the place
where all the souls are lying

maybe it's a middle-class

british hang up, but I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion

the king of limbs

excited excited exciting

the attempt to impose

upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen