Sibelius; for his symphonies but not for his Winter drinking.
Becks; for each parabollad pass, but not theoretical thinking.
Mandela; for nearly everything, but not his choice of first wife.
Rimbaud; for his poetry, but not for his way of life.
Marx; for the analysis, but not the ideology.
St Augustine for self-knowledge; shame about the theology.
Tolstoy for the novels; but failed at self-criticism.
Casanova; terrible fashion sense; PH.D. in eroticism.
Lincoln; another everything except for the terrible beard.
Duchamp: Bride Stripped Bare perhaps; but he gets a little weird.
Alexander; almost certainly; but a bit too fond of burning.
Thatcher; for tenacity; but D minus for the turning.
Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus; moral sense but not realism.
St John the Divine; not for humour but for his chialism.
Freud; for poetic insight; you could hardly call it science.
Heloise and Abelard; for the loving, not the alliance.
Crowley; for the magick, but not his treatment of women.
Byron for the rhyme-scheme, but not his success at swimming.
St Francis; love of animals but not his physical health.
Sartre; for the novels, but not his obsession with self.
Hemingway for the words each day; forget the bull fighting.
McGonagall for the ideas but not the actual writing.
Austen for the observation but not the publishing deals.
Blake for God in Hampstead; but not his grasp of the real.
Joplin not for kindness, but certainly for passion.
Madonna: not her singing; but certainly for fashion.
Theresa for her empathy extending to the dead;
John Stuart Mill for remembering everything he'd read.
Ali for the speed at which he danced and threw a punch.
Mrs Beeton for the way that she transformed our view of lunch.
Dickens - mostly acting; inhabiting a role.
Aretha Franklin's " Think"; the embodiment of soul.
There's 'g' of course; but few of us believe that that is real.
'Intelligences' now take on board the way we move and feel;
our empathy for others; the way we use our limbs;
the way we act in business; or let new phenomena in.
Intelligences; we've got a hundred coming out of our ears.
Cleverly discovering more of them with every passing year.
One question to apply them to Spock, when your trek is done.
If we're individually so clever, why, collectively, are we dumb?
Why can't we agree to disagree without getting involved with killing?
Why can't we dispose of our nuclear waste without the need for landfilling?
Why do we chop the forests down yet claim we care for our kids?
Why allow the dropsical bellies and the fly-crawled, crusted lids?
Why throw punches in bedroom and lounge, in chromium city bars?
Why do we block the view of the hills with a billion ugly cars?
Why attribute malevolence when its mostly misunderstanding?
If we're so bright, all this and more is beyond my understanding.
Ian Florance
OnlyConnect Ltd.