February 20th feels midwinter. The exterior temperature registered two degrees this morning, though day by day there is more daylight. Waking at 6AM now is rising in the dawn, rather than dark of night. What do I mean by “middle of winter”? Certainly I intend an emotive valuation of a single human’s experience of…
Yesterday, Sunday afternoon I attempted to watch the NASCAR race at Daytona. I cannot remember the last time I listened/watched a “stock car” race on television. At the time watching NASCAR became similar to watching golf. The televised races seemed to be perfect for napping. I lasted about 20 minutes, then I had to…
I am reading a new book, the Self-Overcoming of NIHILISM by Nishiani Keiji, translated by Graham Parkes with Setsuko Aihara. [Nihilism], an existential problemin which the being of the self is revealedto the self itselfas somethinggroundless… The phenomenon of nihilism showsthat our historical life has lost its groundas objective spirit,that the value system which…
Today is Wednesday, midweek. Snow is expected. I am happy that the snow will cover everything in a blanket of ice-white-crystal. I hunger to see all, everywhere, the possibility of purity. I know, I know this is a psychological need, a fabricated abstraction, akin to what Plato meant by “the good.” . Such abstractions…
Yesterday was an unofficial American national holiday. The final game of the NFL season was held in New Orleans, The Super Bowl. Ostensibly the athletic championship is a thin pretext for one of the most expensive marketing spectacles of the year, fueled by many of our largest companies. The component of sport is a…
The silhouette sharpens the electric saw with the sheaf of papers,hitting the pages with the saw, and the red splotcheson the walls move around, coalescing and separating; A hammer and sickle appear,no, it’s a five-pointed star, or maybe a stylized arrow-like jeemnext to an elongated map… Is it a victory sign?A sun? A peasant?A…
A gray but mild February day, almost like a Southern winter day. Climate warming amounts to season after season of decreased snowfall, of fewer days of single-digit bitter cold… More heat means exponential acceleration, intensity, a supercharged process,… Opinions become irrelevant. A slow breaking of what we thought to be normal… I read two…
In the United States,Congress, the president and the courtsare supposed to keep an eye on one another — to stop any one branch of government frombecoming too powerful. President Trump is showing uswhat happens when those checks and balances break down. The courts may still intervene,as a judge did yesterday to halt Trump’s offer…
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. -Carl Sagan I’ve got my hands on a copy of Palestinian poet Hisham Bustani’s book of…
What this brings us to, more or less, is a poetic, ironic analysis of events. Against the simulation of a linear history “in progress”, we have to accord a privileged status to these backfires, these malign deviations, these lightweight catastrophes which cripple an empire much more effectively than any great upheavals. We have to…
