May Prompts for Iconic Inconsistencies

Neither yes nor no, but (somehow, impossibly) both.

3 things:

One: I rewatched “Reality Bites” on a flight last week and there’s that part where Winona Ryder tries to define irony as “when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning,” but then she can’t come up with an example to back it up.

Two: I read Joan Didion's “On Self-Respect,” and underlined/kind of got confused by this line about people who: “betrayed and [had] been betrayed, for they betrayed ideals to which they had pledged their faith.”( …but which self betrays which self? The one who makes impossible promises or the one that breaks them?)

Three: In Zen Buddhism, koans are short riddles meant to knock you out of binary thinking. One example is when a monk asks, "Does a dog have Buddha’s nature?" and the master answers: “Mu.” Aka: Wrong question!

Richard Scarry illustrations