Thursday morning. I am existentially feel disoriented. Just read an account of the war in Ukraine, a story about proximity fused mines left by the retreating Russians. These mines explode when a sensor detects a person passing by, scattering shrapnel in a 50 foot radius. My imagination conjures up a Terminator movie… This is…
High, Higher, Highest by Samuel Hazo Viewed from space, the world’s impersonal. France appears, but no Frenchmen. Then Germany, without…
I have never been a Led Zeppelin fan. Taste in music, taste in art has nothing to do with reason. It comes down to serendipity, the genre’s of music that one is exposed to by accident of your time and place in this world. That’s all. There’s no independent baseline of measure, when it…
I watched the Grammy’s Award Show. I am an “old guy” so I knew in advance most of the show content would be barely understood. Music is the voice of a generation. Several generations and more have come into being since mine was up and coming. The Boomer generation was the one born right…
We traveled by train into the city yesterday, to take in a theatrical performance of Six. My first experience of the city post-pandemic, the streets and buildings seemed frozen in time, by comparison to my memory of the bustle of crowds and of the traffic congestion. The dampened vibe was surreal. Much has changed…
…you know it’s now or never Take a chance on rock ‘n’ roll Life is never easy and never will be. By definition ‘to live’ is to feel the friction of cause and effect, the interior movement of changing mood and the exterior uncontrollable forces or personalities, competing for resources, for ascendancy… Sartre…
Every single day is paradoxically heaven and hell. My grand daughter cannot experience life in such terms because she is somewhere in the middle of her effort to acquire language. I have no doubt that as years pass, with experience, reading, pursuit of scholarship, she will understand that unalloyed moments of joy flicker and…
Tomorrow will be my birthday. I am still here. In the course of asking myself, “how the hell did I reach this time and place,” I cannot answer in fine detail. I have to think that shear accident, more than my share of luck has figured into the fact that I am within reach…
Yesterday was a good day. Choosing to revisit the Dick Young Forest Preserve in Batavia, when I arrived my vehicle was the the only one in the parking lot. Following the path to Nelson Lake Marsh I grew comfortable with the solitude. My company was the wind, the brown vegetation, and tender new growth invisibly…
This morning’s New York Times report on the war in Ukraine is a meditation upon the logic of war. “Stand with you, period” President Biden, in a passionate speech from Warsaw on Saturday, proclaimed the West’s complete support for Ukraine. “We stand with you, period,” Biden said. “Not doing enough” The next day, Ukraine’s…
