Getting and Spending
Ask the serious men who study joy and bring to bear
the rigor your old profs would praise.
They know what works – It’s not pretty,
but spreadsheets rarely are.
You’ll find a template in the better academic rags:
Daily measurement of function, frequency, lability, and depth.
Careful record kept of enlightenment anticipated
and the extent it gets achieved.
From there, it’s quick enough (as these things go)
to find the measure of your heart’s desire,
show cost-basis, year-to-date, of what you’ve felt,
and chart your benefits and costs.
And when you’ve mapped your course and all that’s left
is living it — seek other counsel, perhaps your own.
Secretly Ironic 