Convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds ones burden again. But Sisyphus teaches…
Adventurers only exist within the time of their own mortality. No heaven or hell, no memory or glory lie beyond the moment in which their bodies start rotting. The time of adventure only exists as a ‘time of now’….. Whatever we desire, we can only achieve within the narrow time of our biology. Before…
Good work of any kind presents many potential insights. One has to chose one’s focus, what to consider and write about. Artists say more than they are consciously aware in their work. The lyric of China Girl was composed by David Bowie and Iggy Pop in 1976. The lyric and tune sizzle. There are…
The Buddhist in me, really likes these verses. Larkin’s words capture with unemotional observational precision the transience of life. Given the amount of violence, not the TV theatrical variety, but bloody life-wrecking violence in our big cities, and in many places around our world, it is timely to take a step back. You and…
Good discussion last night. The topic was, is revolutionary. Revolutions are violent paradigm shifts, alternative ways of perception, and of self understanding. Political revolutions are almost never a “good” thing, as the river of blood that results, provokes a corresponding violent, bloody response. Revolutions of the intellect, on the other hand are desirable, a…
A long process of religious self-delusion has been necessary to pass from the myth of the birth of work as God’s punishment for the original sin, to the infamous slogan covering the entrance to Nazi concentration camps, ‘Work will set you free.’ A process which covers the distance between the origin of the French…
Wakening this morning, Tuesday, in a mental fog. I managed to stand erect, moving toward the kitchen, wondering how long until the thick malaise of mind would clear. Is this normal for a person my age, a diabetic of too many years…? What is normal? Is it the average, the median? There is no…
No community can survivethat cannot survive the worst.We lack tragic imaginationthat through communal form or ceremony,permits great loss to be recognized,suffered, and borne,and makes possiblesome sort of consolation and renewal. If we are members of a society,we participate, willy nilly,in its evils.How do we reduce our dependencyupon what is wrong?Wrong will be corrected by…
Our culture emphasizes “building wealth” not “building places,” self-service over community life. Pragmatics, efficiency, metrics, metropolis. We have been sold a new vision of architecture, centered on convenience, comfort, the car. This vision erodes our connection to the land, and it is from the land from which we ultimately draw our vitality and viability….
What is to be done? I cannot forget, by some means distract myself, from the darkness that invests Washington, and seems to be gathering strength. This poem by Tennyson, giving voice to aged Ulysses, captures my sense of our situation. The aspiration, given the constraints of age as well as the advantage of experience…
