Buoys – by Changming Yuan
Buoys: 40 Maxims/Paradoxes/Redefinitions
Forty years of age means no more bewilderment.
– Confucius
1. There is light in every dream we have in darkness.
2. Pleasant or painful, all experiences are as good as cash saved for a long rainy day.
3. The meaning of life, if any at all, is to create a meaning for life.
4. All human relationships are merely a matter of words: the situation is always determined by how, where, when and what words or nonwords are uttered by whom.
5. Money is as much a number-play to the rich as a death-dance to the poor.
6. A house for sale is never a home, while a heart unoccupied is a hotel for rent.
7. Freedom is the thin distance between the fleeing mouse and the chasing cat.
8. Love may be 99% honey and 1% money, while marriage is definitely otherwise.
9. True wealth is measured by the number of times you say no or take a shower.
10. Birth throws us out into different times whereas death recalls us back into the same place.
11. One most rewarding self-entertainment is masturbating with the idea of death.
12. Those who carve their love on their chestbones often fall in love with those who throw their love together with their used lipsticks or handkerchiefs.
13. This is not simply a grammatical game of changing the voice: every man loves a woman, but a woman is not loved by every man, and et cetera or vice versa.
14. Many still very much alive are stone dead; many already stone dead are still very much alive.
15. On the stage of life, we may not be able to choose the play, but we can choose the roles to play.
16. Comedy can come without romance or finance, but tragedy has to do with either or both.
17. Growth is painful because it means a series of deaths of our pasts, while death can be pleasant because it may result from a series of births of our presents.
18. Misfortune is a peculiar privilege.
19. In memories, roses always look fresher, while thorns less sharp.
20. What we see or read has always been so edited that the truth remains only in the mind of history unwritten.
21. You may have everything except disease or nothing except money.
22. Besides winds, fish can also create bubbles on the calm surface of the water.
23. Remaining an outsider can give you a sense of superiority, transcendence and peacefulness.
24. Time is the most meticulous makeup master of all.
25. Only those determined to reform others can hope to be reformed.
26. Parting is painful; even more so is having no one to part from.
27. He is happy who is not afraid not to be rich, sexual, famous or powerful.
28. Do some deep thinking about nothing every day, and you will stay healthy, wealthy and wise.
29. We all have some questions for heaven, but heaven always remains silent.
30. In this age of information, we are all fish swimming freely before the net is towed onto the boat.
31. With the whole world becoming so crowded with salespersons, it is high time to invent new alien buyers for our hearts and souls.
32. Good writing comes from the proper author from the proper place.
33. Political correctness means to see to say nothing as if it were news.
34. Democracy is a government of, by and for the few most manipulative.
35. You may have as many futures as new beginnings, but you can have only one past and one present.
36. Wisdom and religion are different in form but identical in essence: while religion is a ritualized social practice of wisdom, wisdom is an art of staying happy without having to be successful in a social sense.
37. Many stars have already died long before their light reaches our eyes.
38. Schooling is either an interruption or an intervention of learning.
39. There is no distinguishing between black and white, for the color of life is grey to begin with.
40. Like god who invented man to expel him from heaven, man invented money to drive himself to hell.
[first appeared in dANDelion]
Copyright 2008 by Changming Yuan
Changming Yuan grew up in rural China, authored three books before moving to Canada, holds a PhD in English and currently teaches writing in Vancouver; his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Canadian Literature, Exquisite Corpse, Istanbul Literature Review, London Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Private (Italy), Southern Ocean Review (New Zealand), Stylus (Australia), Taj Mahal Review and over 100 other literary publications.
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