In some remote corner of the universe, effused into innumerable solar-systems, there was once a star upon which clever animals invented cognition. It was the haughtiest, most mendacious moment in the history of this world, but yet only a moment. After Nature had taken breath awhile the star congealed and the clever animals had…
These days I seldom dream. There have been periods of my life when dreams came often, sometimes with such intensity that when waking, the dream was so vivid, to be as persuasive as my mentally aware life. I remember when my mother died many years ago, sadness descended to ebb and flow for months….
Shearing ice crystals, sound with each step in the predawn gray. The friction of each footfall on this “bitter” morning announces winter’s presence. Friction and heat. Heat in January. Heat as concept, a marker of life remains in my memory. Can you imagine the feel of warmth, to move about in a verdant landscape? …
[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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
A new year, turn the page. We prefer predictability do we not? We cannot help ourselves. Each of us is a standard issue mammal, albeit a language enabled one. Like every living thing our bodies seek homeostasis, that delicate balance which makes living easier, an economy of energy exchange. Those undisturbed circumstances, you know…
