Sunday morning. Back to my routine life. Just yesterday I was in Eagle River Wisconsin, the north woods. It is a country inhabited by wild life as much as by people. Over the 6 hour drive north past Milwaukee and Madison the flat expanses of cultivated fields gave way to aspen and spruce forests. …
The sensualist cries out, “Stay a bit, my tongue has not concluded its encounter; wait a moment for my smile to widen.” If the sensualist could, he would stretch time like a length of elastic….. But experience is not simply a river you can’t step into twice (Heraclitus): it is composed of unrebreathable sighs;…
To think philosophically is to ponder the range of human experience, as well as the tremendous width and breadth of words that have been written to explore, and make sense of that experience. A moment of discovery for the adult fortunate enough to have any curiosity left—-happens when a connection appears between two experiences…
We arrived with just a few minutes to spare. Could this be the place? The winding roads, up and down through the grassy hillsides, the hollows, not that far from the Ohio River were exhilarating and disorienting for two guys from Chicago. Additionally we had overlooked the loss of an hour of travel time…
I never expected to visit Madison, Indiana. More to the point I never heard of the place until we passed through yesterday on our way to the Ohio River. The road trip to Kentucky was for the purpose of having a talk with Wendell Berry. Berry is a prolific author, essayist, poet– one who…
This morning I heard the news that Amazon is purchasing Whole Foods. Jeff Bezos acquires another weapon in his quest to slay the Wal-Mart behemoth. At least that is what the analysts are saying. The prime principle of 21st century greed-is-good Capitalism is “There Can Be Only One.” This mantra comes from the Highlander…
Don commented,–“One of the main problems in discussing reality is that humans have the tendency to separate themselves from the rest of the universe, we feel we are an ‘I’ and everything else is ‘out there”. That word I thought is worth a great deal. Don points to the impossibility of achieving the distance…
Work is a given for most of us. Each day is dedicated to shaping the world, typically in concert with others to derive our sustenance, the necessary energy to feed, clothe, and shelter our organism. That is my basic definition of work. Yet, this essential dimension of life is not nearly so simple. Within…
Two stories are better than just one, right? We all love stories. Stories require imagination, the mind supplies the “sense” of living within the Reality of the story. Story no. 1 is a story of us, we who live in the early years of the 21st century. The words are taken from Paul Virilio’s…
I finished the collection of paragraphs contributed by Philosophy Now magazine readers on the subject of Metaphysics. Metaphysics entails thinking about the nature of the Real. I capitalize Real, because with just a little thought, one recognizes the similarity between “the Real” and the term God. Language is our failing attempt to point at…
