Rhymes Related Quotes

We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.

One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also quite as certainly not to be understood. It is by no means an objection to a book when someone finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author, perhaps he did not want to be understood by "anyone”. A distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers; by selecting them, it at the same time closes its barriers against "the others". It is there that all the more refined laws of style have their origin: they at the same time keep off, they create distance, they prevent "access" (intelligibility, as we have said,) while they open the ears of those who are acoustically related to them.

Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value." This unconditional will to truth—what is it? Is it the will not to allow oneself to be deceived? Or is it the will not to deceive? For the will to truth could be interpreted in the second way, too—if only the special case "I do not want to deceive myself" is subsumed under the generalization "I do not want to deceive." But why not deceive? But why not allow oneself to be deceived? Note that the reasons for the former principle belong to an altogether different realm from those for the second. One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes that it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived. In this sense, science would be a long-range prudence, a caution, a utility; but one could object in all fairness: How is that? Is wanting not to allow oneself to be deceived really less harmful, less dangerous, less calamitous? What do you know in advance of the character of existence to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of the unconditionally mistrustful or of the unconditionally trusting?

And now he is singing a bard's curse upon you, O brother abbot, and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and your grandmother, nd upon all your relations.' Is he cursing in rhyme?' He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in every line of his curse.' ("The Crucifixion Of The Outcast")

16 Over the footbridge.— In our relations with people who are bashful about their feelings, we must be capable of dissimulation; they feel a sudden hatred against anyone who catches them in a tender, enthusiastic, or elevated feeling, as if he had seen their secrets. If you want to make them feel good at such moments, you have to make them laugh or voice some cold but witty sarcasm; then their feeling freezes and they regain power over themselves. But I am giving you the moral before telling the story. There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you: “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” —Immediately, you did not want to any more; and when I asked you again, you remained silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.

Pulaski said, “Even psycho killers need to do home repairs. Probably it’s not related to the case.

Perhaps we ought to feel with more imagination. As today the sky 70 degrees above zero with lines falling The way September moves a lace curtain to be near a pear, The oddest device can't be usual. And that is where The pejorative sense of fear moves axles. In the stars There is no longer any peace, emptied like a cup of coffee Between the blinding rain that interviews. You were my quintuplets when I decided to leave you Opening a picture book the pictures were all of grass Slowly the book was on fire, you the reader Sitting with specs full of smoke exclaimed How it was a rhyme for "brick" or "redder." The next chapter told all about a brook. You were beginning to see the relation when a tidal wave Arrived with sinking ships that spelled out "Aladdin." I thought about the Arab boy in his cave But the thoughts came faster than advice. If you knew that snow was a still toboggan in space The print could rhyme with "fallen star.

Conscious thinking, especially that of the philosopher, is the least vigorous and therefore also the relatively mildest and calmest form of thinking; and thus precisely philosophers are most apt to be led astray about the nature of knowledge.

The question whether truth is necessary must get an answer in advance, the answer ‘yes’, and moreover this answer must be so firm that it takes the form of the statement, the belief, the conviction: ‘Nothing is more necessary than truth; and in relation to it everything else has only secondary value’.

even now the time seems remote when artistic energies and the practical wisdom of life will join with scientific thinking to form a higher organic system in relation to which scholars, physicians, artists, and legislators—as we know them at present—would have to look like paltry relics of ancient times.

Before the shift house was pronounced “hoose” (it still is in Scotland), mode was pronounced “mood,” and home rhymed with “gloom,” which is why Domesday Book is pronounced and sometimes called Doomsday. (The word has nothing to do with the modern word doom, incidentally. It is related to the domes- in domestic.)

The development of speech and the development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming self-conscious) go hand in hand. Let it be further accepted that it is not only speech that serves as a bridge between man and man, but also the looks, the pressure and the gestures; our becoming conscious of our sense impressions, our power of being able to fix them, and as it were to locate them outside of ourselves, has increased in proportion as the necessity has increased for communicating them to others by means of signs. The sign-inventing man is at the same time the man who is always more acutely self-conscious; it is only as a social animal that man has learned to become conscious of himself, - he is doing so still, and doing so more and more. - As is obvious, my idea is that consciousness does not properly belong to the individual existence of man, but rather to the social and gregarious nature in him; that, as follows therefrom, it is only in relation to communal and gregarious utility that it is finely developed; and that consequently each of us, in spite of the best intention of understanding himself as individually as possible, and of "knowing himself," will always just call into consciousness the non-individual in him, namely, his "averageness"; - that our thought itself is continuously as it were outvoted by the character of consciousness - by the imperious "genius of the species" therein - and is translated back into the perspective of the herd.

The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.* If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory’, or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’.

This is what I understand to be true phenomenalism and perspectivism: that due to the nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become conscious is merely a surface- and sign-world, a world turned into generalities and thereby debased to its lowest common denominator,—that everything that enters consciousness thereby becomes superficial, thin, relatively stupid, general, a sign, a mark of the herd, that all becoming-conscious involves a vast and fundamental corruption, falsification, superficialization, and generalization.

The Four Errors. Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and "human dignity".

When I was a little girl, my mother took great pains to interest me in learning to know the birds and wild flowers and in the planting garden. I thought that roots and bulbs and seeds were as wonderful as flowers, and the Latin names on seed packages as full of enchantment as the counting-out rhymes that children chant in the spring. I remember the first time I planted seeds. My mother asked me if I knew the Parable of the Sower. I said I did not, and she took me into the house and read it to me. Once the relation between poetry and the soil is established in the mind, all growing things are endowed with more than material beauty. (p. 12)

381 On the question of being understandable.— One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is not by any means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention—he did not want to be understood by just “anybody.” All the nobler spirits and tastes select their audience when they wish to communicate; and choosing that, one at the same time erects barriers against “the others.” All the more subtle laws of any style have their origin at this point: they at the same time keep away, create a distance, forbid “entrance,” understanding, as said above—while they open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours.

So many things have to come together for scientific thinking to originate; and all these necessary strengths had to be invented, practiced, and cultivated separately. As long as they were still separate, however, they frequently had an altogether different effect than they do now that they are integrated into scientific thinking and hold each other in check. Their effect was that of poisons; for example, that of the impulse to doubt, to negate, to wait, to collect, to dissolve. Many hecatombs of human beings were sacrificed before these impulses learned to comprehend their coexistence and to feel that they were all functions of one organizing force within one human being. And even now the time seems remote when artistic energies and the practical wisdom of life will join with scientific thinking to form a higher organic system in relation to which scholars, physicians, artists, and legislators—as we know them at present—would have to look like paltry relics of ancient times.

Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being. Where should it expand? On what should it feed? How could it grow and multiply? We have some notion of the nature of the organic; and we should not reinterpret the exceedingly derivative, late, rare, accidental, that we perceive only on the crust of the earth and make of it something essential, universal, and eternal, which is what those people do who call the universe an organism. This nauseates me. Let us even beware of believing that the universe is a machine: it is certainly not constructed for one purpose, and calling it a 'machine' does it far too much honor. Let us beware of positing generally and everywhere anything as elegant as the cyclical movements of our neighboring stars; even a glance into the Milky Way raises doubts whether there are not far coarser and more contradictory movements there, as well as stars with eternally linear paths, etc. The astral order in which we live is an exception; this order and the relative duration that depends on it have again made possible an exception of exceptions: the formation of the organic. The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms. Judged from the point of view of our reason, unsuccessful attempts are by all odds the rule, the exceptions are not the secret aim, and the whole musical box repeats eternally its tune which may never be called a melody—and ultimately even the phrase 'unsuccessful attempt' is too anthropomorphic and reproachful. But how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish to become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgments apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word 'accident' has meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type. Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new things. There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is as much of an error as the God of the Eleatics. But when shall we ever be done with our caution and care? When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to 'naturalize' humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?

The greatest advantage of polytheism. — For an individual to posit his own ideal and to derive from it his own law, joys, and rights — that may well have been considered hitherto as the most outrageous human aberration and as idolatry itself; indeed, the few who dared as much always felt the need to apologize to themselves, usually by saying: 'Not I! Not I! But a god through me.' The wonderful art and power of creating gods — polytheism — was that through which this drive could discharge itself, purify, perfect, and ennoble itself; for originally it was a base and undistinguished drive, related to stubbornness, disobedience, and envy. To be hostile to this drive to have one’s own ideal: that was formerly the law of every morality. There was only one norm: ‘the human being’— and every people believed itself to have this one and ultimate norm. But above and outside oneself, in some distant overworld, one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms; one god was not considered the denial or anathema to another god! Here for the first time one allowed oneself individuals; here one first honored the rights of individuals. The invention of gods, heroes, and overmen (Übermenschen) of all kinds, as well as deviant or inferior forms of humanoid life, undermen, dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils, was the invaluable preliminary exercise for the justification of the egoism and sovereignty of the individual: the freedom that one conceded to a god in his relation to other gods one finally gave to oneself in relation to laws, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, in contrast, this rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human type — that is, the belief in one normal god beside whom there are only pseudo-gods — was perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity. It threatened us with the premature stagnation that, as far as we can see, most other species have long reached; for all of them believe in one normal type and ideal for their species, and they have translated the morality of custom definitively into their own flesh and blood. In polytheism the free-spiritedness and many-spiritedness of humanity received preliminary form — the power to create for ourselves our own new eyes and ever again new eyes that are ever more our own — so that for humans alone among the animals there are no eternal horizons and perspectives.

When a general examination of the rhyme scheme in the Qur'an is made, we see that around 80% of the rhymes consist of just three sounds (n, m, a) consisting of the letters Alif, Mim, Ya and Nun258. Excluding the letter "Nun," 30% of the verses are rhymed with "Mim," "Alif" or "Ya." The formation of rhymed prose with just two or three sounds in a poem of 200-300 lines may give that work an important quality, sufficient for it to be described as a masterpiece by literary critics today. However, bearing in mind the length of the Qur'an, the information it contains and its wise exposition, the extraordinary manner in which its rhymed prose system is used becomes even clearer and more beautiful. The Qur'an indeed contains an ocean of information relating to a wide variety of subjects. They include: religious and moral guidance, lessons from the lives of the peoples of the past, the message of the prophets and messengers of Allah, the physical sciences and historical accounts of important events. But all of this, although wonderful in itself, is delivered with the most fantastic literary rhythm and excellence. It is simply not possible for so much rhymed prose by use of so few sounds in the Qur'an, with its varied and knowledgeable subject matter, to be achieved by human endeavour. From that point of view, it is not surprising that Arab linguists describe the Qur'an as "very definitely inimitable.

To what end does consciousness exist at all when it is basically superfluous? If one is willing to hear my answer and its possibly extravagant conjecture, it seems to me that the subtlety and strength of consciousness is always related to a person's (or animal's) ability to communicate; and the ability to communicate, in turn, to the need to communicate: the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of communicating and making known his necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities seems to me however to be so in relation to whole races and successions of generations: where necessity and need have long compelled men to communicate with their fellows and understand each other rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the power and art of communication is at last acquired as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumulated, and now waited for an heir to squander it prodigally (the so called artists are these heirs in like manner the orators, preachers, and authors: all of them people who come at the end of a long chain, each of them 'born late' in the best sense of the term, and each of them, again, squanderers by nature). Assuming this observation is correct, I may go on to conjecture that consciousness in general has developed only under the pressure of the need to communicate: that from the first it has been necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those commanding and those obeying) and has only developed in proportion to its utility.

One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is by no means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it incomprehensible. Perhaps that was part of the author's intention — he didn't want to be understood by just 'anybody'. Every nobler spirit and taste selects his audience when he wants to communicate; in selecting it, he simultaneously erects barriers against 'the others'. All subtler laws of a style originated therein: they simultaneously keep away, create a distance, forbid 'entrance', understanding, as said above — while they open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours. And let me say this amongst ourselves and about my own case: I want neither the inexperience nor the liveliness of my temperament to keep me from being understandable to you, my friends — not the liveliness, as much as it forces me to deal with a matter swiftly in order to deal with it at all. For I approach deep problems such as I do cold baths: fast in, fast out. That this is no way to get to the depths, to get deep enough, is the superstition of those who fear water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. Oh, the great cold makes one fast! And incidentally: does a matter stay unrecognized, not understood, merely because it has been touched in flight; is only glanced at, seen in a flash? Does one absolutely have to sit firmly on it first? At least there are truths that are especially shy and ticklish and can't be caught except suddenly — that one must surprise or leave alone. Finally, my brevity has yet another value: given the questions that occupy me, I must say many things briefly so that they will be heard even more briefly. For, as an immoralist, one needs to avoid corrupting innocents — I mean, asses and old maids of both sexes to whom life offers nothing but their innocence; even more, my writing should inspire, elevate, and encourage them to be virtuous.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" --As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lost his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?--Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their minds and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Had it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. "How shall we comfort ourselves. the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under out knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto." Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightening and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves" It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to always have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not tombs and sepulchers of God?

Alan Turing was another cryptanalyst who did not live long enough to receive any public recognition. Instead of being acclaimed a hero, he was persecuted for his homosexuality. In 1952, while reporting a burglary to the police, he naively revealed that he was having a homosexual relationship. The police felt they had no option but to arrest and charge him with “Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.” The newspapers reported the subsequent trial and conviction, and Turing was publicly humiliated. Turing’s secret had been exposed, and his sexuality was now public knowledge. The British Government withdrew his security clearance. He was forbidden to work on research projects relating to the development of the computer. He was forced to consult a psychiatrist and had to undergo hormone treatment, which made him impotent and obese. Over the next two years he became severely depressed, and on June 7, 1954, he went to his bedroom, carrying with him a jar of cyanide solution and an apple. Twenty years earlier he had chanted the rhyme of the Wicked Witch: “Dip the apple in the brew, Let the sleeping death seep through.” Now he was ready to obey her incantation. He dipped the apple in the cyanide and took several bites. At the age of just forty-two, one of the true geniuses of cryptanalysis committed suicide.

Turing’s secret had been exposed, and his sexuality was now public knowledge. The British Government withdrew his security clearance. He was forbidden to work on research projects relating to the development of the computer. He was forced to consult a psychiatrist and had to undergo hormone treatment, which made him impotent and obese. Over the next two years he became severely depressed, and on June 7, 1954, he went to his bedroom, carrying with him a jar of cyanide solution and an apple. Twenty years earlier he had chanted the rhyme of the Wicked Witch: “Dip the apple in the brew, Let the sleeping death seep through.” Now he was ready to obey her incantation. He dipped the apple in the cyanide and took several bites. At the age of just forty-two, one of the true geniuses of cryptanalysis committed suicide.

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If God is Art, then what do we make of Jasper Johns?” One never knows what sort of question a patient will pose, or how exactly one should answer. Outside the window, snow on snow began to answer the ground below with nothing more than foolish questions. We were no different. I asked again: “Professor, have we eased the pain?” Eventually, he’d answer me with: “Tell me, young man, whom do you love?” “E," I’d say, “None of the Above," and laugh for lack of something more to add. For days he had played that game, and day after day I avoided your name by instinct. I never told him how we often wear each other’s clothes— we aren’t what many presuppose. Call it an act of omission, my love. Tonight, while walking to the car, I said your name to the evening star, clearly pronouncing the syllables to see your name dissipate in the air, evaporate. Only the night air carries your words up to the dead I watched them rise, become remote. Rapidly, yet without any sense of hurry, information about three people is conveyed in passing: not only profession (in the third line) , sexual orientation and educational level but also subtler matters of personality and humor. "In passing" -- well, not exactly: In a work of art, it may be that every moment is part of the destination. The end-rhyming of the second and third lines of each stanza and the banter of patient and doctor are part of the rich, ambiguous conclusion, where the intimacy of a spoken name rises toward the dead in the night air. The "foolish," solicitous and respectful question the doctor asks the patient becomes part of the implicit question of the final lines: In relation to the particular dead people in anyone's life, or in relation to mortality itself, have art and intimacy eased the pain?

Horror Harvest Pakistan pays a heavy price for nurturing terror. Can it destroy the killing machine now? asks Sajjad Khan. Sajjad Khan | 1472 words Relatives mourn at the funeral of Mohammed Ali Khan,15,one of the students killed in the Peshawar school attack; Courtesy: ReutersPeshawar. Terror. The rhyme is as much a cruel coincidence as it is tragic. The capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, one of South Asia's oldest cities and an ancient centre of learning, has suffered massively at the hands of terrorists since Pakistan got embroiled in the Afghan jihad nearly 35 years ago. But even for a city so used to the blood of its innocents being spilled, the horror of December 16 was incomparable: at least 132 students and nine staff members of the Army Public School and College (APSC) mowed down in cold blood by Taliban attackers on what should have been just another day at school.

About two hundred years after the monks arrived and started Old English on its way to a written, literary language, the Viking invasions began, and they kept up for a few hundred years. These Vikings spoke a different language from the Anglo-Saxons, but a related one—Old Norse, the language that eventually turned into modern Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

We have the will, and at least some guesses about the ways. But we’re missing the words.” She flips through her black notebook, trailing her fingers over the rhyme as if it might sprout extra lines and verses. “We’ve looked in every book of witch-tales, every children’s songbook, every scrap relating to Old Salem. If the words ever existed, they’re well and truly lost now.

I've figured out that when I begin to play with words—take them apart like 'breakfast' and make my own microchasm, compare them to their bedfast cousins, revolve them or doodle them dipsy, like fast break or break wind, wind down or downcast; if I anagram them out of recognition; if I fix my mind on their precise definitions, snuffle out their etymologies, pun on them, rhyme with them, riff, and generally foddle them to fits—then something about their wordless counterpart has made me nervous, anxious, reluctant, so I spell my way out of the referent's presence, manage the moment by managing its sign; but, oddly, then, just that disinvolvement frees me to find the truth, the solution, the what? in the history of meaning, to see a fast as a whole loaf, to understand that when I break a fast I'm momentarily sharing a rare affirmation in a life of relatively continuous monastic denial (breakchaste could be where one stores a dinette set), that, in fact, I'm eating my abstinence; that to break is not merely to interrupt or to bust but to place in pieces something that was once one, and then to reverse the orientation of the fragments: eat, and bits of the matzo disappear; eat, and you are no longer in a state of refusal; eat, and unless you were fasting while you slept (possibly in a dream), you broke nothing when you fried your bread; better call what you had petit déjeuner substantiel, and play it safe.

Then Rod comes up, his glasses glistening. He doesn't remove them. He starts to sway. Is he high? - "Hello. Are you all listening? I'm glad so many of you are here today, Because as of now you're part of a movement that uses writing as a tool for the improvement of the world! I know that of course it looks like what we do is make great trans books, and we do! You've all read Arizona? And what did you think? Was it fucking great? Were you like, 'It's a book, but I somehow relate'? Turns out a novel about a tranny stoner driving to Flagstaff can also be a tool to build community!" "People think that the power of books is surprising, like 'it's just a book.' Well I've got news! Books are vital. We need humanizing depictions of ourselves, depictions we can use, to feel okay, or make sense of our being. Because if you're cis, you're used to seeing people like you in books and on screen. That's normal, that's how it's always been. But we have to do the work of trying to insert ourselves, and pretend we can see meaning in characters we could never be, and failing, and feeling like we're lying, or else we conclude that books are lame and go off to play a computer game. "And simultaneously, we're learning we have nothing to say, that people of our kind, whatever emotions we might have churning around in our bodies, don't have a mind: we can't be authors, we needn't be respected, at best we're specimens to be dissected! Know yourself, the philosophers instruct, unless you're trans, in which case, you're fucked. We're known by others Our prescribed aspiration is to change ourselves, the definition of despair! Worse yet, we don't know what it is we share. Because of our intellectual isolation we're strangers to each other, a community without any real culture to talk about.

Twinkle twinkle little star, I know exactly what you are. Nursery rhyme for humankind, Descending all from Africa.

THE BEAR A bear, however hard he tries, Grows tubby without exercise. Our Teddy Bear is short and fat, Which is not to be wondered at; He gets what exercise he can By falling off the ottoman, But generally seems to lack The energy to clamber back. Now tubbiness is just the thing Which gets a fellow wondering; And Teddy worried lots about The fact that he was rather stout. He thought: "If only I were thin! But how does anyone begin?" He thought: "It really isn't fair To grudge one exercise and air." For many weeks he pressed in vain His nose against the window-pane, And envied those who walked about Reducing their unwanted stout. None of the people he could see "Is quite" (he said) "as fat as me!" Then, with a still more moving sigh, "I mean" (he said) "as fat as I! Now Teddy, as was only right, Slept in the ottoman at night, And with him crowded in as well More animals than I can tell; Not only these, but books and things, Such as a kind relation brings - Old tales of "Once upon a time," And history retold in rhyme. One night it happened that he took A peep at an old picture-book, Wherein he came across by chance The picture of a King of France (A stoutish man) and, down below, These words: "King Louis So and So, Nicknamed 'The Handsome!'" There he sat, And (think of it!) the man was fat! Our bear rejoiced like anything To read about this famous King, Nicknamed "The Handsome." There he sat, And certainly the man was fat. Nicknamed "The Handsome." Not a doubt The man was definitely stout. Why then, a bear (for all his tub ) Might yet be named "The Handsome Cub!" "Might yet be named." Or did he mean That years ago he "might have been"? For now he felt a slight misgiving: "Is Louis So and So still living? Fashions in beauty have a way Of altering from day to day. Is 'Handsome Louis' with us yet? Unfortunately I forget." Next morning (nose to window-pane) The doubt occurred to him again. One question hammered in his head: "Is he alive or is he dead?" Thus, nose to pane, he pondered; but The lattice window, loosely shut, Swung open. With one startled "Oh!" Our Teddy disappeared below. There happened to be passing by A plump man with a twinkling eye, Who, seeing Teddy in the street, Raised him politely to his feet, And murmured kindly in his ear Soft words of comfort and of cheer: "Well, well!" "Allow me!" "Not at all." "Tut-tut! A very nasty fall." Our Teddy answered not a word; It's doubtful if he even heard. Our bear could only look and look: The stout man in the picture-book! That 'handsome' King - could this be he, This man of adiposity? "Impossible," he thought. "But still, No harm in asking. Yes I will!" "Are you," he said,"by any chance His Majesty the King of France?" The other answered, "I am that," Bowed stiffly, and removed his hat; Then said, "Excuse me," with an air, "But is it Mr Edward Bear?" And Teddy, bending very low, Replied politely, "Even so!" They stood beneath the window there, The King and Mr Edward Bear, And, handsome, if a trifle fat, Talked carelessly of this and that…. Then said His Majesty, "Well, well, I must get on," and rang the bell. "Your bear, I think," he smiled. "Good-day!" And turned, and went upon his way. A bear, however hard he tries, Grows tubby without exercise. Our Teddy Bear is short and fat, Which is not to be wondered at. But do you think it worries him To know that he is far from slim? No, just the other way about - He's proud of being short and stout.

Slant Slant or half rhyme appears to be a phenomenon of the last hundred years or so. In fact it is a new definition for strategies poets have always used to build up musical patterns within and across lines. In Welsh poetry, for instance, where Wilfred Owen and Dylan Thomas encountered it, it’s called proest. It widens the focus from full rhyme to consider the range of assonantal or consonantal shapes our ear can recognise as more or less distant relations of the original rhyme sound. In so doing it broadens the range of English, allowing it to equal the rhyming resources of Italian or Russian by drawing on its native reserves of alliteration and vowel-patterning. It also reinforces the element of discovery which is an integral part of rhyme: the surprise of a good slant rhyme will invigorate the listener’s ear just as much as a too-easily anticipated full rhyme tires it.