The sky is a uniform gray, the traffic moves silently, on the far side of the Starbucks window on State Street here in Geneva. Snow is predicted for the late afternoon or early evening. Forecasters are almost apologetic for uncertainty. They’re unable to predict how much snow will fall. Computer models for weather much…
Sunday, grey, road slick with a sheen of plowed snow, — that’s winter in the mid-west. I do not mind the snow. It is a blanket for nature. Snow slows the pace of town-life, obstructing the efficiency, a machine-logic that accelerates, a reminder that winter’s cold is a sign. Now is the season for…
Ferrari. I saw the movie for the second time yesterday. A friend, (who has spent a good amount of time at race tracks) and I met at the theater. The arc of the story, the birth of the Enzo Ferrari company is entwined with its founders history in post-WWII Italy, his conflict fraught marriage…
I must write about this tune, said the insistent small voice as if a small version of my younger self sat on my shoulder. The Cutting Crew tune came over the radio as I made my way before sunrise to the Geneva Starbucks neighborhood. There is something about this tune, the keyboard runs which…
Thursday, the sun threatens to illuminate which is a hint of a brighter afternoon. Wintertime in the Midwest. How can one resist absorbing the somber, gray, cold of the season? I must resist. Music is a proven tactic for sustaining creativity, the motivation for good work. I finished an essay written by Nietzsche which…
Midweek and I am unsure what to write. Uncertainty is the rule, the rule that overrides all else most of the time. Read a passage translated from Aristotle’s Ethics I 1094b which is famously and often quoted. The philosopher writes that we should measure our judgment to the particular topic at hand. Our expectations…
A quotation captured my imagination this morning. Consider that there are varieties of knowledge. The knowledge that is acquired by learning the proper names of the elements, by learning how they combine to form complex molecules, by learning the mathematics by which molecular chemistry is expressed – are all types of knowledge. Then there…
A new year, turn the page. We prefer predictability do we not? We cannot help ourselves. Each of us is a standard issue mammal, albeit a language enabled one. Like every living thing our bodies seek homeostasis, that delicate balance which makes living easier, an economy of energy exchange. Those undisturbed circumstances, you know…
Japanese: Oshōgatsu is the festival of year’s end and of a new beginning. The holiday is celebrated by gathering with family and friends to eat traditional foods. The feasting is typically preceded by the visit to a local temple where at the stroke of midnight one offers a coin to the deity. The temple…
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the horizon? –The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche To The Unknown God Once more, before I move on I am directing my gaze forward In loneliness, I am lifting my hands Up to Thee, to whom I flee, To whom I, from the deepest bottom of…
