Leftovers
Imagination is the creator of everything.
The cosmic universe, the world,
All things sentient, all things inanimate,
All cultures, all languages, all deities, all dogmas,
All histories, all sciences, all mathematics, all music, all art,
All industries, all technologies, all measurements, all space, all time.
Every illusion, every vanity, every everything, under any and every given sun.
All nothing more than imagination.
* * * *
What is history?
My story, your story, his story. her story, their story, our story, the story.
All nothing more than imagination larking about in each and every mind.
* * * *
History has never existed as more than a fiction of imagination.
It is but a shadow given reality in the vanity of human consciousness,
Ever since its evolutionary ascension in the primal jungles long before time.
* * * *
Every culture has a history, every culture has a narrative.
Every culture makes every conceivable-feasible effort
To manipulate the future into its enduring likeness.
* * * *
History is the invention of whatever mind deems rumored events worth remembering,
And wielding the narrative it discerns into an amalgamation that never really happened.
* * * *
In any of history’s free-for-alls for democracy,
When has government of the people, by the people, for the people,
Really ever not been government of the oligarchy, by the oligarchy, for the oligarchy?
* * * *
There is no history, only historians.
There is no translation, only translators.
There are no Christs, there are no Buddhas,
Only middlemen and followers and circus tents.
* * * *
The human paradigm is an outcome of memory cells created through evolutionary happenstance,
Through natural selection in such a way as to conjure up an imaginary self,
And the rest is the make-believe we call history.
* * * *
History changes every time a page is added or torn out.
History is unchanged even when a page is added or torn out.
* * * *
No matter that it be alleged fact or fantastical fiction, all thinkers, all writers, all actors,
All historians, all scientists, all mathematicians, all engineers, all electricians,
All architects, all carpenters, all chefs, all tailors, all cobblers,
All inventors, all producers, all originators,
All creators of every variety, every scope, are storytellers.
Soundbites
Only history knows.
* * * *
No history has ever existed.
* * * *
Human history is about individuals and tribes feeding upon one another.
* * * *
Obligation to history? Why?
* * * *
What human history proves again and again is how gullible human beings can be.
* * * *
History does not care what you did, or for how long.
* * * *
History is a human concoction.
* * * *
History is the giver and taker of life and death, and all entitlements between.
* * * *
All history, as scientifically as it might be sorted, boils down to scholarly speculation and story-telling.
* * * *
Every form has a history, yet where is its beginning, where is its end?
* * * *
Revenge is one of the greater engines of history, but does not hold a candle to greed.
* * * *
There is no knowing the truth of history; it is all the speculation of storytellers.
* * * *
What history does anyone care about most but their own?
* * * *
So much history we can barely if ever know.
* * * *
What is history but storytellers telling of story makers.
* * * *
No witness, no history.
* * * *
We are all blends of history come before.
* * * *
The lie that history wrote.
Breadcrumbs
Eternity’s historian.
Sketches of the Once Upon a Time
The Historian
A history teacher in college one day out of the blue pointed to a few of us and said,
“You are a historian … You are a historian … You are a historian … You are a historian … “
At the time it meant nothing – zipped past the youthful head of innocence, so to speak –
but in the years since, the realization of what he meant has taken unforeseen wings.
These Many Thoughts
These many thoughts are left for humankind’s unfolding reverie,
written by a witness, a seer, who was born in 1953 A.D.
to what duration he cannot at this writing say.
Geographically, it was called Northern California
during the agricultural-industrial-technological epoch
of the United States of America, a nation-state
in what seemed the zenith and early decline
of civilization as he elected to perceive it.
But history knows many such epochs,
so the accuracy of all predictions in time
is for future scholars to ponder and pontificate,
as they always have, and undoubtedly, always will.
Without History
“Without history, we are nothing,” a Merritt Hulst long ago said.
And now, I would say to him, “Even with history, we are nothing.”