More Thunder
V. What the Thunder Said There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mudcracked houses …
What The Thunder Said
The Waste Land By T. S. Eliot V. What The Thunder Said Then spoke the thunderD A 400Datta: what have we given?My friend, blood shaking my heartThe awful daring of a moment’s surrenderWhich an age of prudence can never retractBy this, and this only, we have existed 405Which is not to be found in…
Holding On
[By] thus selecting and precipitating the unusual, astounding, difficult, and divine, Philosophy marks the boundary lines dividing her from Science in the same way as she does from Prudence by the emphasizing of the useless. – Early Greek Philosophy and other Essays, by Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 73 Nietzsche paraphrases Aristotle to say that philosophy…
Never Mind The Stench
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…
The Living Legacy
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…
Tougher Than The Rest
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 Should’ve Walked Away
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…
Music
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…
Whatever You Call The In Between
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…
About Dreaming
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…
