--meaning, what? Where does this idiom come from?

 

[enters search on Yahoo! Answers, enquiry responds--]

 

J. Madison      answered 3 years ago:

A reference to King Mithridates VI, who, in the first century AD, immunized himself to

different poisons by taking regular doses of each with a grain of salt. Other accounts

indicate his actual discovery of an antidote -- a recipe containing a grain of salt.        

Source(s):  Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder

8  likes.            1 dislike.

 

T. Jeff              answered 2 years ago:

In Latin, "salis" refers to both salt and wit.

2  likes.         1 dislike.

 

A. Cole           answered less than 1 year ago:

To be taken with amount comparable to a grain of salt: very little.

4  likes.           2 dislikes.

 

B. Franky      answered less than 1 year ago:

Haven't you ever put salt on an open wound. It hurts like nothing else. Take with a grain of

salt is like saying, "Take it like a man." My grandfather said it to me too many times to count.      

Source(s):  grandpa

12 likes.          4 dislikes.

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* Superpowers?

--"...remember, with great powers, come great responsibilities."--

 

No, we have nothing against "modern" art. --

We wish only to challenge the basic premise of its conception.

 

For even its staunchest supporter might concede that its guiding credo, "Everything is art!" --was popularized from an era when "high"

art was low-browed by a growing middle-class, and thus, by a growing segment reaching to identify themselves with culture and class.

 

But just because everything is art doesn't mean there isn't a distinction between "good" art and

"bad" art -- that is, art that reflects closer to Truth, or doesn't. On a spectrum of all "Art" as follows,    

 

(and we use these terms relatively):--

 

 

"bad, individual, aesthetic"   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "good, social, utilitarian"

 

1) some might place 'physics' at the far end of this side,

for it is an art most stripped of sentimentality and subjection,

cold and precise and as utilitarian as the language of nature, mathematics.

 

2) Tragedies often find a space closer to the right as well,

for they reveal Truth to the extent of the inevitable

twosides to every scenario, "pleasure" or "pain,"

 

3) And in fact most arts hover somewhere in the middle, between aesthetic expression and greater meaning,

while the best poetry straddles the two unlikely extremes, between the "profane" and the "profound,"

 

4) ...and then we have Duchamp's Fountain, the "champion" of modern art:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...an urinal, which he picked up from the hardware-store a day before the exhibition.

 

We know, we know -- seen from higher ground, art is never the object itself, but its subject on the mind: only the receptive mind can fulfill the full promise of any art, and it is for this reason critiques are largely arbitrary and reveal only the constraints imposed by the mind of the perceiver. --

 

But we believe that art as idea-only, lacking depth and virtuosity, is self-indulgent at best.

 

...and here we are, getting ahead of ourselves. So, at the risk of becoming self-indulgent--

 

Thank you for your time. Here's a picture of a catcus:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* The Elevator

--an archetype suspense-thriller--

 

By order of appearance:

Franky, the Trickster,

Cole, the Director,

Maddie, the Philosopher, and

Jeff, the Poet.

 

This introduction was inspired by the Prelude to Goethe's Faust, as translated by the artist/painter

Barker Fairly, while the archetypes can be applied across our various manifestations in the series, generally.  

 

Incidentally, the story did come out of a writing exercise.

 

But it remains uncertain within the context of the story which of the characters is correct, --and we would like to remind the audience that, perhaps in real life, such archetypes are not so easily differentiated-- e.g. the poet/trickster -- the Jester,-- who alludes to Truth by sarcasm

and foil, and the poet/philosopher -- in our opinion, the only real kind of philosopher there is. ("Philo-sophy," -- lover of wisdom.)

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...Oh, and Washington, the Prophet.

 

 

 

 

* Twice a Month It Rained

--an epic-poem from the highlands--

 

The first in the series of -meta adventures starring Cole, we hope this piece

addresses an emotion that is difficult to place, but familiar to each of us.

(Though, Washington would still have us believe the "Infinite Potential.")

 

The giveaway clues to the identity of the traveller, --aside from his conversation with

the innkeeper, --include, his "sad noble eyes," and Little Johnny's gift, the "obsedian snow."

 

The story's original concept included raining animals -- mastiffs, german sheperds and such, alligators.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* The Face of It

--according to Him--

 

It is said that Truth ("God," or "Moby-Dick") is beyond the capacity of our senses to describe, and it is for this reason that the eyes (Cole) and the nose (Maddie) struggle to place it in the context of their everyday existence. A comparable analogy from Buddhism might be the parable of the Elephant, where the senses are each given an element of the elephant's body --the trunk, the tusk, the tail, the belly-- then asked to describe the animal, as a whole.

 

Influences for this piece, aside from the Heart Sutra, might be from Emerson's essays and Plato's Symposium, which describe goo-goo feels as a metaphysical agent in the realization of greater individual potential. Other influences include: Benjamin Franklin's essay/letters written from the personified "Left Hand" and "Good Conscience," and the preface to Nietzsche's Beyond Good or Evil, which begins,

"Supposing truth is a woman -- what then?"

 

But mostly, the narrative draws from the characters, themselves.

And we hope the reader enjoys catching the various personality traits injected into the senses --

 

* the Nose, who reveals what is often concealed from the other senses

* the Eyes, comparing the "light" from Truth's eyes to the antithesis of Einstein's solar-eclipse experiment for the General Theory of Relativity

* the Mouth (Franky), the Ears (Jeff), and the Heart (Washington).

* The number of "blinks," in a meta- moment from Cole, is roughly equivalent to 25 years and 7 minutes - 25 years and 3 hours old.

* the Mouth "sweating," the Ears "slapping his faces," the Nose "sighing," etc. etc.

 

-- as much as we've enjoyed writing about them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Standing on Shoulders of Giants, and Falling

--the series' conclusion, starring Franky and Jeff--

 

This was our very first story, and still one of our favorites. Though, the references might be a little overwhelming for the casual reader,

so here's below a listing of the references, in order of appearance, and their significance, we believe, to (our) continuum of thought --

 

The mer du knowleedge is a joke on English-speaking pronounciation of faux-French words.

 

Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides are three of our earliest Greek metaphysicians --Heraclitus, the one known as "The Obscure," survives by some hundred thirty-something of his maxims, whose profound impact on "Hegel, Marx, Lasalle, Nietzsche, the Stoics," and perhaps even the Bible (like in the Gospel of John, describing Jesus as logos -- or, the Word) cannot be overstated.

 

The other half to this original pre-Socratic beast-duo, the "philosopher and poet"-- Parmenides -- and his poem, On Nature, of which only some hundred-something verses remain, has been oft-cited for carrying substance like: "the emptiest thought carries the most enormous meaning," --much in tune with the ancient Eastern proverb, "The palest ink is better than the best memory." Anaxagoras is important too. We forget why.

 

The "Beautiful Ugliness" of Socrates is a reference to his facial resemblence of a pug, compared often to that of Aesop's, but that his impeccable conduct radiated sort of a hypnotic charm over the youth of Athens, who found him oddly irresistible. As he says: "Beauty is Utility!"

 

The Master is Confucius, who, alongside Socrates, were both secular prophets whose exemplary citizenship and practical wisdom set forth a standard for human civilization, East and West, for the next 3,000 years-- basically, to this day.        (See exhibit below)

 

"tink and you will fail!" The 'tink' for 'think' is not a typo; it was a quirk of an accent that Einstein was known for, e.g. "I will do a little tink."

 

Xenophon: A remarkable soldier, and the very practical and simple-minded student of Socrates, from whom we owe credit for half of the remaining extant literature on the legendary teacher, the other half being Plato's. While Plato's dialogues plumb the depths of Soc's mind, Xenophon's accounts reflect his extremely practical side -- demonstrating, the greatest minds survive uniquely through the molds of different recounters. 

 

Dewey: Either the Dewey of book-cataloguing fame, or the Dewey who championed Progressive education in the 19th-century, when schools were factories with the implicit design to keep them busy and out of trouble--

 

(To be continued.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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