"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
- Daniel Boorstin
Subjective vs. Objective, or Bits of String
(A Poem)
The leaf of Sassafras springs from the wayside
Three fingers of green
Waving in Summer
To a splashdown
The laughter is ripening on the trees
Three fingers of green
Saluting summers gone
Dappled tales of rootbeer in the shade
Slipping on under the bridge
Now far downriver
A raft of
The Subjective
The leaf of Sassafras grows in the sandy, drained soil roadside
Sasafras albidum
Root bark with medicinal properties
Soon autumn will be here
I reckon
and the leaf will turn red and gold
The taproot makes it hard to transplant
Specimens of the Objective
(The magic withers and dies)
I’ve been collecting facts and figures
Measuring the stars
And scaling them down to
Bits of string
The pile is getting taller
But still hasn’t turned into a rope of wisdom
I stack up the books to crushing heights
Totter from a pulpit of knowledge
But I still can’t reach the Truth
Slipping behind the clouds
Like the moon.
Words materialize in the air
Silvery at first
Turning into
Bars of proper steel
Aging me in a prison of thoughts
I scribble feverishly on the wall in this cell of Found Knowledge
To the beat of the distant guns.
Did you know that the Garden of Gethsemane has
a phone number?
It’s +972 2-626-6444
Please listen closely, our menu options have changed.
Book Updates
“And then, I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.”
Elf jokes aside, it sure was nice to party with my Hill City Writer friends last night. A colleague, Emma Babbitt, has published an insightful vignette in The Jimsonweed. It’s a literary magazine. How cool is that? (Check out her blog here.)
I was talking about my new book, Cities On a Hill. (It’s the story of working in a nursing home during the COVID lockdown.)
Writers, like any craftsmen, get buried in the technical (word choice, grammar, etc).
But what’s the result?
To take the crushing monotony of days behind locked doors, to document the ordinary folks grappling with extraordinary times, of how petty tyranny was met with grace and fortitude, all because it had to be done, and never with the expectation of an audience, and indeed when an audience was illegal, to spill these tears into ink on a blank page, and remember - well, that’s an honor.
They died invisible. And now they’re not.
It makes me stop and marvel that these stories are like seeds, drifting on the wind, landing on coffee tables and bookshelves, picked up late at night or over lunch, where people are reading, and witnessing.
For all my fancy words, I couldn’t beat what my grandma said.
“It should be a national book! I’m going to read it again as soon as I finish it!”
Do you have a copy yet? Here it is online, and paid blog subscribers get one for free, too.
Do you have an idea of who needs to read it? Maybe an influencer, a newspaper, or a friend who could use it? Let me know: JoshUrban@protonmail.com
Let’s get those stories out there!
Josh