I had lunch with an old friend recently and quoted Richardson to him, which reminded me of my neglected post series. Here’s one from Vectors 3.0:

“143.
The audience is faceless, back rows disappearing into dimness, and it doesn’t talk back. Find your audience and you will blather. Write, instead, to the listener at your table for two, the one in your head whose faint blush, half-smile, glazed eyes make you correct course in midsentence, back off, explain, stop to listen.
”

Excerpt From
By the Numbers
James Richardson

https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/by-the-numbers-by-james-richardson/

Good blogging advice also!

A friend is dealing with a large bureaucracy and it brought to mind this aphorism. It’s way too damned difficult to get a human on the phone any more and it’s not just cost.

214.
Someone’s deceleration to exit, read a sign or
rubberneck starts a little chain of responses
that becomes a five-mile backup. So much of
what turns out to be the huge evil of systems
is the amplification of tiny reluctances to let go
of a habit, to lift a phone, to look up and meet
someone’s eyes.

-James Richardson, ‘Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays.’

41. If you do everything for one reason, then all you have done will be become meaningless when the reason does.

James Richardson, Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays

26.
The tyrant’s self-esteem is just fine, thank you. It’s you he
doesn’t care much for. And yes, he recognizes that he doesn’t
feel what you feel. Which is a good thing, since your feeling is
so weak that it makes him need to beat you up.

James Richardson, Vectors 3.0: Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays

208.

If you change your mind, you are free. Or you were.

and

174.

Debts of a certain immensity demand betrayal.

‘Vectors’, by James Richardson