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Caroline welcomes the return of Yahia Lababidi,
Egyptian poet and aphorism Genie, that we may say a lot in a little.“In the deep end – every stroke counts” (Yahia Lababidi)
“Aphorisms are an ancient form, but its current-day master is Yahia Lababidi.” (Poet, Richard Blanco).We are also covering attribution as good ally etiquette …
(Yahia says, “I found around 40 items on Amazon & beyond using words of mine without permission or attribution to sell their products. So I have decided to start our own business to take aphorisms back: https://society6.com/lababidi)
We will cover the art of attribution
as good ally etiquette….
And both he and I are Librans
born at the Dark of the Moon,
with the Moon in Virgo –
Language Crafting Hermes/Hermia Moon,
witch’s-wizard’s moon
and here be some tasty aphorisms:
Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)
Excerpts (aphorisms):
- A good listener is one who helps us overhear ourselves.
- With enigmatic clarity, Life gives us a different answer each time we ask her the same question.
- The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.
- Temptation: seeds we are forbidden to water, that are showered with rain.
- Impulses we attempt to strangle only develop stronger muscles.
- Ambiguity: the bastard child of creativity and cowardice.
- Truth can be like a large, bothersome fly – brush it away and it returns buzzing.
- In life, as in love, graceful leave-taking is the epitome of gratitude.
- Pleasure may be snatched from life’s clenched fists, not joy
- Miracles are proud creatures; they will not reveal themselves to those who do not Believe.
- To be treated with mercy, some must reveal their handicaps, while others must conceal them.
- To hurry pain is to leave a classroom still in session.
- To prolong pain is to miss the next lesson.
- Like cars in an amusement park, our direction is often determined through collisions.
- The personal made universal is art’s truth.
- Take two opposites, connect the dots, and you have a straight line.
- Romantic: one who professes to prefer the thorns to the rose.
“Where Epics Fail: Aphorisms on Art, Morality & Spirit” (2018)
in The Elephant Journal, Nov 3, 2013
- Aphorisms respect the wisdom of silence by disturbing it, but briefly.
- To maintain immaculate speech, often times silence is required.
- One definition of success might be refining our appetites, while deepening our hunger.
- Hope is more patient than despair and so outlasts it.
The Sun be quintiling Neptune:
Metaphors are the incarnational garb whereby power enters the world…
and Venus be quintiling Pluto: Beauty is stronger than tyranny
Saturn
Saturn sextiling Moon:
“Maturity is having access to all of our resources”
Sun trine Uranus: Trickster be the Keeper of Democracy
and “let us leave room for other to behave in unexpectedly appropriate ways.”
Yahia Lababidi’s latest book, WHERE EPICS FAIL, was featured on PBS NewsHour and generously endorsed by Obama’s inauguralAccording to Chard deNiord, Poet Laureate of Vermont, it ‘resonates in plain-spoken yet dazzling poetry–sometimes epigrammatic, sometimes expansive–that betrays the eclectic transmissions of his myriad influences, from Rumi to Kierkegaard, Dickinson to Kafka.’
Lababidi’s first book SIGNPOSTS TO ELSEWHERE was selected as a 2008 Book of the Year by The Independent. “Signposts” was followed by well-received collections of cultural essays, TRIAL BY INK: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing; poetry, FEVER DREAMS; and a series of literary dialogues with Alex Stein, THE ARTIST AS MYSTIC: Conversations with Yahia Lababidi. BARELY THERE is a collection of his short poems, many of which were inspired by the constraints of social media and touch on the life of the spirit.
