But you’ve gotta make your own kind of musicSing your own special songMake your own kind of musicEven if nobody else sings along. Once more lyric and melody by The Mama’s and the Pappa’s emanated above us at Starbucks. The voice of Cass Eliot was arresting. We interrupted our conversation to agree how much…
Monday arrives in splendor of sunlight. I discovered a very tiny sprouting “volunteer” cucumber plant in my garden. The diminutive life survived months of winter to sprout on occasion of warm sunlight and spring rains. I rescued the seedling for transfer to a water filled vase. It’s about one inch in length. This will…
A gray and rain-soaked Sunday morning, I take sip after sip of hot coffee to dispel a sense of funk. Until late in Saturday evening my attention was focused upon family related responsibility, the privilege of celebrating graduation of a grandson from high school. This is the milestone-dividing line between childhood and adulthood. Learning…
Saturday arrives. Brilliant with sunlight, a retention pond just outside Starbucks is full with recent rain, the surface dances white light, a plate of diamonds. Today stands to be a full one. The “big event” will be the pig-roast late in the day. A family member (who constructed the roaster over 20 years ago),…
…authenticity too comes to be understood, as its own goal. It is born, out of a shift in the center of gravity of the moral demand on us: self-truth and self-wholeness are seen more and more not as means to be moral, as independently defined, but as something valuable for their own sake. …the…
Continuing to consider what I just finished reading in The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor. My identity, this awareness of agency that I entertain, – can be described as self-creation, an arduous project of construction. The American Psychological Association writes: self-formation as authenticity is the active, intentional process of shaping your identity based…
Saturday is yet another gift. Sunshine, mild and comfortable outside. A day of rain would be helpful for vegetation, including vegetables. No matter that everyone is aware of such matters, still I have a background of concern for growing things, in particular those in my backyard. I just finished reading The Ethics of Authenticity…
Another chapter from Charles Taylor’s The Ethics of Authenticity. The chapter is entitled The Slide To Subjectivism. He writes at length about the quest for a true self, when there is no horizon of meaning, (no divinely sanctioned king, or gods/God on high authorizing history as having a point, etc..) Perhaps you can get the…
Saturday begins on a mellow note. The coffee here at Starbucks is hot, astringent, a bracing effect – just as I like it. I know, I know that it’s an acquired taste. Only three of us now occupy the customer area. Each reads quietly. A coffee shop is a public space dedicated in part…
Wednesday, late afternoon, I am thinking about multiple realities. I mean the singular fact, – “the real” is co-dependent upon the mind! What reality do you prefer? There is no single univocal, granite-like “real” no matter how comforting this ancient intuition has been for us. What’s real – is a feature of the synthetic…
