About 20 years ago I was introduced to the work of Piet Hein. He was a Danish physicist (a Nobel Prize winner, in fact), who in his later years took to writing poetry. His poems (remarkably, written in English, which was his second language) are clever aphorisms - short, pithy pieces of reason wrapped in rhyme. He called them "Grooks", and published six books of them through the 1960s. An example:
(Useful tip: in some European countries, "flipping a coin" is called "spinning a penny")
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP
Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you' re hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.
Another of my favourites:
MAKING AN EFFORT
Our so-called limitations, I believe,
apply to faculties we don't apply.
We don't discover what we can't achieve
until we make the effort not to try.
They are brilliant, insightful little piece of wisdom I take through my day - some get taped over my computer, some just roll around in that vast, empty expanse of my brain, surfacing now and again when a moment or event or a passing thought beckons them.
Hein's six books are long since out of print. One of the joys of touring is that I end up in used bookstores wherever I go, and it's nice to have a mission: I carefully browse the poetry section, looking for his books. Sometimes I get lucky, come across a copy of Grooks 2 or Grooks 5 (the hardest to find); more often I fail. But when I do find them, it makes my week. I carry my prize home and add it to my collection, making up sets from the odd books I find to give as presents to friends.
Once, in Port Coquitlam, B.C., I stumbled on a full shelf of Piet Hein books - 22 in all. My jaw dropped. I nonchalantly asked the store owner what he wanted for the whole collection. He said "Two bucks a book ...?"
Most were in pretty good condition (readers of poetry tend not to abuse their books the way, say, Tom Clancy readers might), but I held up a particularly battle-scarred edition and said "Really? In this kind of shape?"
"Well, what do you want to pay?"
"I could see giving you this twenty for the lot of them," says I. "Give you a chance to free up this shelf. My kid likes them," I added with a shrug. And in truth, they do look a little like kids' books.
"Sure, fine, $20 is good," said the owner, snatching the bill, passing me a bag, and going back to his newspaper.
I saw no reason to tell him that in good condition, a copy of Grooks is worth somewhere between $25 and $40 US.
MEETING THE EYE
You'll probably find
that it suits your book
to be a bit cleverer
than you look.
Observe that the easiest
method by far
is to look a bit stupider
than you are.
And here I thought I had invented the 'flip a coin and then judge by the reaction" trick when I was 7 and I couldn't decide which video to rent.
I love these, thank you very much for the pointer.
Posted by: al | December 06, 2003 at 05:34 PM