Thursday at 7AM the morning sun burned a pallid orange. Wildfire smoke in the high atmosphere filters the sunlight. For us here in the Fox Valley it is an early sign of much more that is coming. In terms of climate the midwest is not far from Quebec where the fires burn. Imagine the…
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do…
What I do or do not do now is as important for everything that is yet to come as is the greatest event of the past: in this tremendous perspective of effectiveness all actions appear equally great and small. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 233 by Friedrich Nietzsche I shared these lines with…
Slept in today in the aftermath of a full weekend. Sunday afternoon I had a rare opportunity to attend a live performance of show tunes, by the Fox Valley Festival Chorus. As you’d imagine the work of Stephen Sondheim was a feature of the concert. These lines from perhaps the best known of Sondheim’s…
What does your conscience say? — “You shall become the person you are.” –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 270 by Friedrich Nietzsche My mind is numb, as if tantalized by just a taste of what is badly needed. Like the promise of rain, in the midst of a drought. Dry ground, dormant grass…
Sacrifice– The sacrificial animal does not share the spectators ideas about sacrifice, but one has never let it have its say. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 220 by Friedrich Nietzsche I am haunted by this line of text, by this thought. Compared with other mammals life for humans has great added difficulty. Our…
Dreams— Either we have no dreams or our dreams are interesting. We should learn to arrange our waking life the same way: nothing or interesting. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 232 by Friedrich Nietzsche Lately I hardly dream. Where does a dream belong? Are dreams the visitation of a god? A message from…
Thursday dawns with a hazy sky, hundreds of wildfires burn in the Canadian north. Since we all share a single planet New York City, the eastern seaboard of the United States is choked with unhealthy levels of smoke. For New York’s citizens it is unhealthy to be outside. Are we about to change our…
Faith makes blessed— Virtue bestows happiness and a kind of bliss only on those who have not lost their faith in their virtue— not on those subtler souls whose virtue consists in a profound mistrust of themselves and of all virtue. Ultimately, then, “faith makes blessed” here, too, and not–mark it well– virtue. –excerpt The…
Animals as critics— I fear that the animals consider man as a being like themselves that has lost in a most dangerous way its sound animal common sense; they consider him the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 224 by…
