Plague Journal, Dropping Over The Rim
“You cannot pass,” – Gandalf to the Balrog on Bridge of Khazad-dûm
Plague Journal, Livin’ It Up
A day dawns. Is it a new day, or is it groundhog day, a hellish repetition of the last four years? This is reference to the election of course. Could this be a version of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return? That understanding of history posits that we are fated to repeat every detail of…
Plague Journal, When The Bullet Hits The Bone
When I was in my 40’s I learned that my great Uncle Thomas McLamb was a soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia lead by Robert E. Lee. The War of Northern Aggression did not go well for Thomas. He was greviously wounded by a spent minié ball at Kelly’s Ford, Virginia. Uncle…
Plague Journal, Bond Is Dead
The words that I just typed into the header caused a chill as I read them trailing the cursor. I knew on Saturday morning that Sean Connery had passed by means of my cell news feed which is almost an instant conduit of information about events. The next day, scanning the New York Times…
Plague Journal, Something Lurks
Yesterday we celebrated Halloween by accompanying costumed children on a parade through a suburban neighborhood. The homeowners appeared as happy to dispense treats to passing children, as were the children receiving the sweets. Halloween is a day of celebration, a mirthful exercise of imagination, a costumed reminder of our belonging to a wider community,…
Plague Journal, The Fable Collapses
The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible — he is Dionysian. — excerpt Twilight of the Idols by Friedrich Nietzsche, chapt. “Reason” in Philosophy published 1888 Yesterday a friend and I chatted for twenty minutes about the writings of Nietzsche…
Plague Journal, That Great Fatality
In that great fatality called Christianity, Plato represents that ambiguity and fascination, called an ‘ideal,’ which made it possible for the nobler natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to step on the bridge leading to the ‘Cross’… And how much Plato there still is in the concept ‘church,’ in the structure, system, and…
Plague Journal, What America’s President Does Not Say
“The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” Macron said in a televised address. “Like all our neighbours, we are submerged by the sudden acceleration of the virus.” “We are all in the same position: overrun by a second wave which we know will be harder,…
Plague Journal, Darkness My Old Friend
That which is earlier with regard to its rise into dominance becomes manifest to us men only later. That which is primally early shows itself only ultimately to men. Therefore, in the realm of thinking, a painstaking effort to think through still more primally what was primally thought is not the absurd wish to…
Plague Journal, Poetry With A Knife
Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely represent and pursue the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst…
