You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on wasted potential and the failure to create art despite abundant inspiration.
Jorge Luis Borges expresses a deep sense of disappointment regarding unfulfilled creative potential. The imagery of oceans and the sun symbolizes the vastness of life and beauty that has been squandered on the individual, highlighting the anguish of not having produced a meaningful work, such as a poem, despite the richness of the experiences one has had. This serves as a poignant reminder of the urgency to create and contribute artistically before time runs out.
In practice
In a discussion about creative blocks during a writing workshop.
You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures , culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood.
I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.
The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.
It's been a long time...I shouldn't have left you_x000D_ _x000D_ Without a strong rhyme to step to.
When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.
It was incredible to have J Dilla in your dining room making beats - it was one of the greatest experiences I've had.
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