References to the macabre are hyperbole it seems to me, in relation to our Halloween. American kids look forward to scoring a bagful of free candy treats while thinly disguised in the costume of choice. Halloween is by no means as comparably serious as the Dia de Muertos in Mexico that features offerings to…
We viewed a film noir, The Killing by Stanley Kubrick. One’s sense of viewing, the take-away from the film hinges as much upon what one brings to the screen, as upon Kubrick’s cinematic composition of the tale of a horse racetrack heist. The mastermind of the theft from the track counting room, Johnny Clay is…
A world without suffering is easy to imagine. Every human that has lived, members of our species, we language enabled mammals, finding ourselves thrown into this world, experience pain on many accounts. To avoid pain, to seek pleasure is and has been universal. A world without suffering has been a theme of countless legends,…
The statement is enough. It will be sufficient to linger for a while to consider what this means, how extensive the repression of imagination. Our imagination expands our world. The world is held conjointly, you and I in relation, even more, in company with all living and nonliving things. Who is to say that…
On Sunday, two days ago I took the opportunity to visit the track for a final time for this year. It is mid fall. Soon the temps will fall, warm days will become a memory. Drag racing is a fair weather activity, ideal for summertime. Direct sunlight, heat, make asphalt lanes treated with traction…
I am a fan of civilization. The comfort of this Starbucks, the soothing background music, the efficient and professional-polite barista, and this “just right” hot cup of delicious coffee, all appeal to me. Is this what is meant by civilized, polite society? I mean a society calibrated to ensure security and comfort for those…
Words published in 1881 persuades us that we ought to stop lying to ourselves. Nietzsche, the philologist compares the epoch of modern humanity, an era marked by reason, and the search for knowledge, by awareness of class differences, of institutional injustice, (a few of the hallmarks of a liberal-democratic society) – a juxtaposition with…
Attempting to wrap my mind around this insight – I inwardly shiver. To become well educated in the contemporary sense means a grasp of cause and effect, of a mechanical notion of reality, that events, even occasions of unspeakable enormity, of power so destructive that ordinary words cannot serve, – are no longer divine…
My quest for insight from Nietzsche continues. Today I began reading The Dawn of Day written in 1881. Beginning with The Dawn of Day Nietzsche’s ideas began to coalesce into a unified vision. As usual reading Nietzsche is like running full-out into the cold ocean surf. There is the shock of difference, the comfort…
A visit to the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market is something we look forward to. On the street between vendor stalls, I remember the excitement of childhood: the sky is blue, I hear the conversation and laughter of our Batavia neighbors. A majority of us work indoors. Is is not natural to be out of…
