The Tick-Tock Tractatus
Speaking of Time: The Poetic Investigations
By Michael P. Garofalo
August Offerings, Red Bluff CA, 2010, MPG
Sections
1. Time: time-space, movement, measurement
2. Past: memories, habits, fixed, specific, tradition
3. Present: now, here-now, day, duration
4. Future: maybe, planned, anticipated, uncertain
5. Passing: change, cycles, aging, growth, death
6. Beginning: renewal, starting, enthusiasm
7. Psychology: learning, experience, knowing
8. Middle: in progress, half-way, steady, living
9. Language: poetry, philosophy, ordinary
10. Silence: inexpressive, nonsense, illogical
11. Mystical: numinous, profound, intense, insightful,
12. Beauty: art, crafts, music, reading/writing
13. Social: ethics, morality, economics, manners, value
14. Philosophy: ethics, history, analysis, arguments, logic
15. History: landmark events, books/printing, memory
16. Eternity: forever, infinite, unimaginable, death
Bundled Up Quintains about Time
12.6
The Gardening Sutra: Excerpts
Pulling Onions
A garden recreates itself daily; we seldom step in the
same garden thrice.
We don't erase the past, we just build more and bigger blackboards.
The present is made from the past.
Time creeps, walks, runs and flies - it is all about moving things.
Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.
How can gardening be considered a "leisure time" activity?
Always leave extra time for unraveling the hose.
Gardeners turn into the soil their lifetime.
Time may wait for no man, but seems to muddle and poke
quite slowly for gardeners.
Springtime for birth, Summertime for growth;
and all Seasons for dying.
Put the right plant in the right place at the right time in
the right way - and you won't go wrong.
Winter does not turn into Summer; ash does not turn
into firewood - on the chopping block of time.
A garden flourishes in the mind's time of last season,
next season, and now.
Gardening requires no commuting time.
In the right place at the right time,
tomato worms on tomato vines.
Your pocket knife will be its dullest at just the right time.
Gardening is the right sport for a lifetime of pleasures.
Gardening sometimes takes a few hours of a day,
but adds weeks of pleasure to your life.
The time you have wasted on your garden
is what makes it priceless.
One purpose of a garden is to stop time in one place.
Annuals disappear, shrubs perish, trees die, and
gardeners are buried; death is the flower of time.
In an instant there is nothing - Time produces Nature.
By the time you peel off five layers of reality,
it's hard to recall the first.
It's a long time between my garden and the Pacific Ocean.
Time will tell, but we often fail to listen.
The "eternal truths" are sometimes clearly false.
Gardening teaches us to take our time, slow down,
and wait in peace.
Gardeners learn to live in worm time, bee time, and seed time.
Time will not pass you, but it will follow very close behind you.
Preparation and follow up take up more time than doing the deed.
Springtime flows in our veins.
Silence - never misquoted, sometimes misunderstood,
often meaningful.
Leave enough time for some pointless behavior
to reveal your deeper desires.
The seed idea for "God" is springtime.
Things always go downhill, fall apart, wear out...
the arrow of Time pierces everything.
Time prevents too much from happening at once.
A million years and a second have the same
feeling for the dead gardener.
All metaphors aside - only living beings rise up in the Springtime;
dead beings stay quite lie down dead.
Any gardener who is not using the scientific method
will waste time and money.
Take the time to melt into the Details.
Time is rooted in Place.
Most of the time, we just borrow from the past.
Sometimes the present alters our interpretation of the past;
most often the past surrounds and infects the present.
Time is on your side when you are young.
Leisure can open a window to the breezes of insights,
and a clear view of the Trees of Time.
We get things done when there is little time left.
Our cash limits and time constraints both prune our gardens.
The second hand of time ticks on---
measuring our past, time after time.
Beings are Becomings---for the time-being.
Perfection can be the opponent of betterment.
Without vagueness we are bored with literalness.
Borderline cases are where events become really interesting.
I may not be able to precisely define religious nonsense,
but I know it when I hear it.
A coastline may be impossible to measure,
but is still beautiful.
You can’t slowly boil the frog unless
it can’t jump out of the pot.
A “heap” of something desired becomes an issue
when the price is discussed.
Gratefully, shit happens!
The ten thousand things are more enchanting
than the Silent One.
Walking needs earth, space, and the walker.
Sometimes, just one 'thing' is critical
because twenty other 'things' are just so.
Gardening is a kind of deadheading---
keeping us from going to seed.
Don't interfere, be still, and listen to the litanies of bees.
Tooth and nail, and the stench of a dead animal on the wind.
When life gives you onions, it stinks.
A rake is spaces held together by steel.
In the student's mind there are few possibilities,
in the teacher's mind there are many;
but only time to realize very few.
Mother Nature is always pregnant.
Time creeps, walks, runs and flies -
it is all about moving things.
Dogmatists are less useful than dogs.
Take life with a grain of salt, and a icy margarita.
The best things in life are more expensive than you think.
Rather than "love mankind," I'd rather admire a few good people.
Some flourish when crowded together, others don't.
Garbage In, Compost Out.
It is more about You and Now, rather than Them and Back Then.
While gardening the borders between work
and play become blurred.
When gardening, look up more often.
Just the right words can be worth more
than a thousand pictures.
Death's door is always unlocked.
A flower needs roots; beauty a society of minds.
A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.
A working hypothesis is far better than a belief.
Only two percent of all insects are harmful.
Why are they all in my garden?
Create your own garden, the god's certainly won't.
That something is eternal is unverifiable.
Most laws of Gardening are merely local ordinances.
Too save some time, don’t let them get a foot in the door.
Some slippery slopes are actually improvements or fun.
Butterflies and bees flapping their wings don’t actually
create hurricanes, but we are very thankful they facilitate
the emergence of fruits in the billions.
Without metaphors we can barely speak.
Just because you reject the big request, don’t be
fooled into accepting the smaller request.
Finding a middle ground for agreement may
be just half of a solution, and the wrong solution.
Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd is quite unwise and unfair.
Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.
Failures, disorder and death are the
Grim Reaper of Entropy at work.
Somehow, someway, everything gets eaten up, someday.
The meaning is lost in the saying - a nature mystic's dilemma.
Vigorous gardening might help more than a psychiatrist's couch.
A gardener is no farmer, he is much too impractical.
No garden lasts for long - neither will you.
Shade, in the summer, is as precious as a glass of water.
A wise gardener knows when to stop.
Gardens are demanding pets.
Unclench your fist to give a hand.
The little choices day after day are the biggest issue.
Gardening is but one battle against Chaos.
When life gives you onions, you ain't making lemonade.
Many friendships are sustained by a mutual
hatred of another person or group.
Read until you go to seed.
What you see depends on when you look.
Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener her slave.
One's "true self" is changing and elusive.
A little of this and a little of that, and some exceptions -
these are the facts.
Does a plum tree with no fruit have Buddha Nature? Whack!
BU3152, BU929, GC#9
Pulling Onions by Mike Garofalo
Over 1,000 random quips, one-liners, sayings,
and "insights" from an old gardener.
The History of Gardening: A Timeline From Ancient Times to 2000
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