Halloween. On the eve of October 31st, the sun sets and sidewalks are transformed by children dressed in costumes of all descriptions, even adults embellished with face paint, – to celebrate a festival of ghosts, goblins, a few hours of zany merriment. Adults are allowed to give expression to the inner child, to participate…
Saturday 11:35 AM is quite late for me to be writing here at Starbucks. But who cares? I will not care as long as I come up with some good words. I awakened at 6AM in order to be present on the sidelines to observe and cheer a grandson play his final soccer game…
I awakened a few minutes ahead of the alarm. Sometimes that happens. That part of me which eludes words, wanted to be conscious, awake/alive… Thus began my day. On my way to Starbucks, I could sense that Friday will be warm, a return of comfortable weather, prior to the certain advent of frost, and…
Fall is a divine time of year. Fall is the season of harvest. As well, the days grow shorter, a chill descends, sunlight falls oblique upon the earth and the maple leaves catch fire, and begin to fall. They fall one by one, finished, the alchemy of chlorophyll having utilized sunlight to make sugar. …
All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called “Celts,” in our language “Gauls,” the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. – excerpt The Gallic War by Julius Caesar (written in 53 BCE),…
It [laughter] burns as it comes into contact with death; from the symbols of the emptiness of death it draws a heightened consciousness of being. …It brings us out, for a time, from the impasse in which life is enclosed by those whose only concern is to preserve it. …those arts which sustain anguish…
Egoism is like trying to swim without relying on the water, endeavoring to keep afloat by tugging at your own legs; your whole body becomes tense, and you sink like a stone. -Alan Watts Egoism… There are many untethered egos about these days. I think that capitalism as a way-of-life, breeds this illusion of…
It is not so much a matter of what you do as of how you do it, not so much the content as the style of action adopted. -Alan Watts I heard more than once from a conservative-minded friend that former President Trump accomplished some good things. Perhaps. Even to concede my friend’s point,…
The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing. Music is a delight because of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you arrest the flow and prolong a note or a chord beyond its time, the rhythm is destroyed….
At every moment we are crushed by the idea and the sensation of time. There are only two ways of escaping from this nightmare, of forgetting it: pleasure and work. Pleasure exhausts us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. In every man, at every time, there are two simultaneous tendencies -one towards God, the…
