Slept in today in the aftermath of a full weekend. Sunday afternoon I had a rare opportunity to attend a live performance of show tunes, by the Fox Valley Festival Chorus. As you’d imagine the work of Stephen Sondheim was a feature of the concert. These lines from perhaps the best known of Sondheim’s…
What does your conscience say? — “You shall become the person you are.” –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 270 by Friedrich Nietzsche My mind is numb, as if tantalized by just a taste of what is badly needed. Like the promise of rain, in the midst of a drought. Dry ground, dormant grass…
Sacrifice– The sacrificial animal does not share the spectators ideas about sacrifice, but one has never let it have its say. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 220 by Friedrich Nietzsche I am haunted by this line of text, by this thought. Compared with other mammals life for humans has great added difficulty. Our…
Dreams— Either we have no dreams or our dreams are interesting. We should learn to arrange our waking life the same way: nothing or interesting. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 232 by Friedrich Nietzsche Lately I hardly dream. Where does a dream belong? Are dreams the visitation of a god? A message from…
Faith makes blessed— Virtue bestows happiness and a kind of bliss only on those who have not lost their faith in their virtue— not on those subtler souls whose virtue consists in a profound mistrust of themselves and of all virtue. Ultimately, then, “faith makes blessed” here, too, and not–mark it well– virtue. –excerpt The…
Animals as critics— I fear that the animals consider man as a being like themselves that has lost in a most dangerous way its sound animal common sense; they consider him the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 224 by…
Once I was tempted to think that candidates for office are bloviating buffoons, vacuous minded, baby kissers, etc. etc. I no longer think such a candidate for office is harmless. Who is not dismayed by the condition of the country; we are all bit performers in a comedy of societal dysfunction. It is unclear…
…Since the ancients believed in dreams,waking appeared in a different light. The same goes for the whole of life, which was illumined by death and its significance;for us “death” means something quite different. All experiences shone differently becausea god shone through them. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 152 by Friedrich Nietzsche As the…
The debt ceiling crisis is over. The idea that our nation could refuse to make good on debts already incurred is surreal, the creation of an insane world. In effect this would destroy the credit of the nation by a single political impasse. Embedded in my mind is image of President Biden and Speaker…
Starbucks on Saturday morning, the first day of Memorial Day weekend. Sunshine is rapturous… I sometimes catch myself in a fit of imagination wondering what it must have been like to live in the Athens of Greece during the reign of Pericles, the golden age of Athenian democracy. Radical idealists of all stripes are…
