War Gods
Another Saturday morning at Starbucks. No two Saturdays are alike. With a backward look each of those Saturdays has its own character. After all change is another way of saying that time matters. Time is the ocean that buoys, supports, in which everything swims.
I have been swimming for a few days toward the finish of this essay by Martin Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche: God is Dead.” A few pages closer to the end point. I am sure that Heidegger wrote for himself. He wrote to better understand, what is recognized by many to be a singular, a revolutionary way of thinking. Nietzsche did not merely extend, embellish the intellectual inheritance of the past. On the contrary he thought a nodal point to be at hand, that the current of history portended the upending of the Enlightenment based self-understanding of the West.
Lately I have been waking very early in the morning having dreamed something that immediately evaporates from consciousness as I become aware of the room. This has occurred several times. Dreams are involuntary are they not? They come as visitations.
On Wednesday I saw in the distance dark, low hanging clouds on the horizon as the light faded at dusk. Lightning flashed cloud to cloud in the distance. Cloud shapes in the sky illuminated momentarily by intense light. As a kid we called this ‘heat lightning.’ It appeared as if the gods/goddesses were engaged in combat, casting lightning bolts… The National Weather Service writes this effect happens when one is simply too far away to see the cloud to ground flash, to hear the thunder.
Wednesday was February 7th, the dead of winter.
