Approaching Eighty-Four
I’ve done this before:
Approached an age ending in -four,
Each ode not odious, just curious.
We try again, thinking a-fresh,
Looking back perhaps, or not at all,
Each day too precious to make small
By wasting time
Or spending energy so prime
One can’t afford to lose a moment.
So, the four shall represent a forward;
Optimistic, filled with power
For and in the precious hour;
Looking pretty
For each meeting -
Why the devil not? One’s got
A draw full of cosmetics -
Why not use them up,
Take priorities inborn,
Sworn in by gene-filled gifts and such,
And stay in touch.
“Know yourself” says Socrates.
“Please yourself”, says Corwin.
Integrating both, the tightest squeeze
Can be a breeze, can save your skin,
Transform a sin to virtue.
So, this eighty-four
Will use the talents and affections,
Making use of recollections and reflections
For a future
Filled with skilled and skillful, single-minded concentrations.
I’ve done this before:
Approached an age ending in -four,
Each ode not odious, just curious.
We try again, thinking a-fresh,
Looking back perhaps, or not at all,
Each day too precious to make small
By wasting time
Or spending energy so prime
One can’t afford to lose a moment.
So, the four shall represent a forward;
Optimistic, filled with power
For and in the precious hour;
Looking pretty
For each meeting -
Why the devil not? One’s got
A draw full of cosmetics -
Why not use them up,
Take priorities inborn,
Sworn in by gene-filled gifts and such,
And stay in touch.
“Know yourself” says Socrates.
“Please yourself”, says Corwin.
Integrating both, the tightest squeeze
Can be a breeze, can save your skin,
Transform a sin to virtue.
So, this eighty-four
Will use the talents and affections,
Making use of recollections and reflections
For a future
Filled with skilled and skillful, single-minded concentrations.
The Debate of Socrates and Aspasia -- Nicolas-André Monsiau
Sokrates only made it to 71 years old before he was sentenced to commit suicide. He left no writings behind but his students Platon, Xenophon, Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Aeschines of Sphettos left behind accounts of his personality and thought; however, the only reference to him during his lifetime was by the comic playwright Aristophanes, who lampooned him. Aspasia was almost exactly his contemporary. Her house was an intellectual center in Athens, where she hosted the leading writers and thinkers of the time including (and perhaps influencing) Sokrates, and like him was pilloried by Aristophanes. The "Diotima" in Platon's "Symposium" was probably her alter ego. She was the lover of the statesman Perikles, and Platon intimated that she had taught rhetoric to both him and Sokrates. Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes each named a Socratic dialogue after her; Aeschines suggested that she advised the acquisition of virtur through self-knowledge, while Antisthenes portrayed her as the personification of sexual indulagence who seduced Perikles into choosing pleasure over virtue. Little is known about her, but various accounts suggest that she may have been a Carian prisoner of war who became a slave; or a relative of the general-turned-traitor Alcibiades, who was closely connected to both Sokrates and Perikles; or a hetaira (a class of prostitutes similar to a geisha in Japan.)
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