I’ve listened to this song over and over. It’s included on a greatest hits CD by The Band. There are several tunes that I like on the disc. This one is like a gift from the god’s in its sad beauty. I’ve never personally experienced anything like unrequited love, but I can imagine how…
“Do you know that we are both children of the devil?” Yes, that is what we are. The devil is the spirit, and we are his unhappy children. We have fallen out of nature and hang suspended in space. —Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse p. 126 Suspended in space. That’s how I usually feel these…
Our evening of discussion on the legacy of Stoicism was engaging. How satisfying to spend time with friends, discussing according to our ability an ancient tradition that is deemed yet valuable. A consensus of the group was that living according to the nature of things, acceding to what is beyond our control, in order…
Who am I? I am unsure, because I find myself accepting points of view that upon reflection are short sighted, mean-spirited, and often closed-minded. This has been my plight since I was overtaken by interest in philosophy in my mid twenties. I am still unsure of myself, unsure that there is a single, unitary-self…
WHAT WILL YOU DO? By Ranier Maria Rilke What will you do, God, when I die? I am your jar (if cracked, I lie?) Your well-spring (if the well go dry?) I am your craft, your vesture I— You lose your purport, losing me. When I go, your cold house will be Empty of…
“They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.” “They [animals] may be terrible sometimes, but they’re much more right than men.” “How do you mean—right?” “Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a…
What a song! The story told by the lyric did not happen to me. Who knows if it happened to anyone? I can imagine though. I grew up close to a wide expanse of woods, and a half mile or so distant was a railroad track. You could follow the creek and eventually you’d…
More from Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. Harry Haller mired in the seeming pointlessness of continuing to live, finds his loneliness relieved by a chance conversation with a female that he has met at the bar, The Black Eagle. She desires to dance but Harry resists, so she bids him take a nap while she…
Who would not remain a child as long as possible, to play forever….. My hand is raised. That is not possible. The passage of time, the toll of aging –exacts a price. The bill for living is that sooner or later you must die. That is the way it is. The concert must end,…
I propose a national holiday, a floating holiday decreed by Congress, timed to coincide with the blooming of the cherry trees along the Potomac River. This will be a rite of spring, a mandated closure of all but essential business, including the exchanges on Wall Street. All citizens will be encouraged by a proclamation…
