And how many new ideals are, at bottom, still possible! —Here is a new ideal I stumble upon once every five weeks in a wild and lonely walk, in an azure moment of sinful happiness. to spend one’s life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality; half an artist, half a bird…
Uncertain, what to write this morning. Tom, stopped by for several minutes and we exchanged our impressions about “philosophy.” Tom mentioned the slog of reading John Stewart Mill. I agreed with him. Mill was as inaccessible to me as well. I said, that one must pick and choose among the philosophers, selecting material that…
Should I say anything at all about this song? It is a classic Marty Robbins cowboy ballad. Released in 1959 the lyric and the melody convey a heightened tension between the inevitable confrontation between one representing “law and order” the constraints of civilized life, and another, representing the imposition of idiosyncratic preference with a…
Music often elevates my spirit. A catchy tune, and smooth lyrics launch me into a memory, or sometimes rotates the axis of my view point. I tend to interpret reality in shades of gray. I’d like to be optimistic. I work at it. But, my body, the experience that has accrued over the years…
Saturday morning and the day is cold. Early December’s days oscillate between mild 50s and frigid lows of mornings in the low teens. Like life. A shuttle between opposites… This morning, a short drive from Batavia to the Geneva Starbucks a tune by AC/DC, Highway to Hell played on the radio. The song, another…
Friday is gray overcast, the temperature mild, and the day is windy. Change is always on the playbill. Why not welcome another harbinger of winter? Reading On Nietzsche by Georges Bataille, I am captivated by the author’s analysis of the trajectory of a life, in the light of a relationship, or relationships of maximum…
On a state designated by a shorthand name, (impalement), I am writing these few lines in the form of a theme for meditation: I imagine: an object of attraction. The flame Shining and light Consuming itself in itself Annihilating itself And in this way revealing emptiness, The identity of the attraction, Of that which…
The Philosophy Bunch discussed the topic of euthanasia. Death is not an event which merely happens to each of us as individuals. Dying is a process measured by time, and there are infinite ways to die. It is exceeding rare for anyone to die without the involvement of others. (Death must be the definitive…
For much of my adult life I’ve felt drawn to the writings of Nietzsche. I have speculated inwardly the reasons why this is so. I think my attraction to this troubled writer from the 19th century was inevitable. Do we have any say in the time and place of our birth, the circumstances and…
I have nothing in mind for writing today. Perhaps it was the troubling dream that came in the early morning hours that unaccountably erased/rebooted my psyche? I am left with a mind that is grasping helplessly. Nothing “makes sense.” Is “making” sense nothing more than a safety-blanket of illusion? Is that enough? Can I…
