…[to] recognize chance as destiny once more and see the ruins of my being as fragments of the divine. My soul breathed once more. My eyes were opened. There were moments when I felt with a glow that I had only to snatch up my scattered images and raise my life as Harry Haller…
In the German spirit the matriarchal link with nature rules in the form of the hegemony of music to an extent unknown in any other people. We intellectuals, instead of fighting against this tendency like men, and rendering obedience to the spirit, the Logos, the Word, and gaining a hearing for it, are all…
I’ve listened to this song over and over. It’s included on a greatest hits CD by The Band. There are several tunes that I like on the disc. This one is like a gift from the god’s in its sad beauty. I’ve never personally experienced anything like unrequited love, but I can imagine how…
“Do you know that we are both children of the devil?” Yes, that is what we are. The devil is the spirit, and we are his unhappy children. We have fallen out of nature and hang suspended in space. —Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse p. 126 Suspended in space. That’s how I usually feel these…
Our evening of discussion on the legacy of Stoicism was engaging. How satisfying to spend time with friends, discussing according to our ability an ancient tradition that is deemed yet valuable. A consensus of the group was that living according to the nature of things, acceding to what is beyond our control, in order…
Who am I? I am unsure, because I find myself accepting points of view that upon reflection are short sighted, mean-spirited, and often closed-minded. This has been my plight since I was overtaken by interest in philosophy in my mid twenties. I am still unsure of myself, unsure that there is a single, unitary-self…
WHAT WILL YOU DO? By Ranier Maria Rilke What will you do, God, when I die? I am your jar (if cracked, I lie?) Your well-spring (if the well go dry?) I am your craft, your vesture I— You lose your purport, losing me. When I go, your cold house will be Empty of…
“They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.” “They [animals] may be terrible sometimes, but they’re much more right than men.” “How do you mean—right?” “Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a…
What a song! The story told by the lyric did not happen to me. Who knows if it happened to anyone? I can imagine though. I grew up close to a wide expanse of woods, and a half mile or so distant was a railroad track. You could follow the creek and eventually you’d…
More from Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. Harry Haller mired in the seeming pointlessness of continuing to live, finds his loneliness relieved by a chance conversation with a female that he has met at the bar, The Black Eagle. She desires to dance but Harry resists, so she bids him take a nap while she…
