It is Monday morning, just three days before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving will be a needed respite. The Kyle Rittenhouse verdict has been on the minds of many. I am no exception. I have thought about the trial and the verdict well enough. I wish this were a dream or better put, a nightmare from which…
Is there no help for it? What I mean to say, I cannot conceive how to avoid the abyss of the irrational, that which eludes language. Language is the ease by which the mind constructs reality out of binary symbols, black is not white, sweet the opposite of sour, etc. These words are successively…
MUSIC DISSEMINATES TRUTH BECOMING A WEAPON OF MASS INSTRUCTION. OUR MUSIC IS FAMILY UNRELATED BY BLOOD. WE MUST BE VIGILANT. WE MUST BE CITIZEN SOLDIERS, STRIPPED OF FEAR. OUR OPTIMISM IS MAGNIFIED IN OUR MUSIC. –Patti Smith I have thought about these words for many years. These days, there does not seem to be…
We engaged in a discussion about pop culture last night. As enjoyable as that was, after a good night’s sleep I feel unease, that there’s little left to talk about. The examples which we cited were no longer current, freshly minted. We discussed Dune, the film recently released, October 22 of 2021. The book…
When things, signs or actions are forced from their respective ideas, concepts, essences, values, points of reference, origins, and aims, they embark upon an endless process of self-reproduction. Yet things continue to function long after their ideas have disappeared, and they do so in total indifference to their own content. The paradoxical fact is…
Friday, a beautiful Fall day, with frost and full sunlight. Today is my grand daughter’s 2nd birthday. Watching her grow day to day has been a rare delight. She is the advancing edge of the new world that is born with each generation. And what of that “new world?” Upon her adulthood some twenty…
We reached Asheville. The drive from Greenville, S.C. to Asheville was barely more than an hour. The dogwoods in the foothills flamed blood red. The color change is beginning, though I do not think there has been a frost yet. Seated in the breakfast room of the Holiday Inn I overhear a conversation between…
…more miles south yesterday, into South Carolina. We are staying in Greenville, which I had forgotten is the home of Bob Jones University. The term “University” is understood as only Christian fundamentalists would understand the word. Young adults born into a cultic form of faith seek admission to BJU. “Faith” by the literalist interpretation…
If I can struggle against a fit of depression,in the name of what vitality can I oppose an obsessionwhich belongs to me, which precedes me? In good health, I take the path I prefer;“sick,” it is no longer I who decide: it is my disease.For the obsessed, no choice:their obsession has already opted for…
There are songs, — one song alone for which I’d pay the full price of a concert ticket, to hear performed live. Never mind the rest of the set list, a single melody and lyric would make the ticket outlay, as well as the effort to reach the venue, the expense of time, —…
