Category: Uncategorized
-
Morality, like Art, means drawing a line someplace.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about morality for some reason; not that I figure I’ve entered its purview or anything, you understand -I don’t make a habit of climbing a fence where I’m not sure of my welcome now that I’m old and creaky. I suppose that, having only a few leaves left on my branches…
-
The poems the earth writes upon the sky
I don’t know… ever since I read Suzanne Simard’s ‘Finding the Mother Tree’ a few years ago, I’ve felt differently about plants -about Nature. Simard, a professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, ‘is known for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks, which has led to…
-
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing
Words are important, but sometimes it is silence that is more eloquent; often, to sit in silence takes courage, and yet it sometimes communicates more than sound. It allows the listener to anticipate and you, the speaker, to think; it is not always awkward… And yet, there are norms: whose turn it is to listen,…
-
My mind is seldom like the flame of a candle in a windless place…
Maybe I’ve been doing it wrong all these years; maybe I’m not supposed to fall asleep just because my eyes are closed and I’m bored -even if the reason I’m doing it is because I think I’m meditating; or trying to calm down; or maybe because it’s a way to kill time until lunch or…
-
With Age comes wisdom; sometimes Age comes alone…
It’s taken me a long time to wade through my years, but now I realize I’ve lost some of my early memories. Of course, I suppose you don’t get to luxuriate in your 80ies without a few pages disappearing -early chapters in the book hastily read in the enthusiastic joy of youth, episodes underlined or…
-
Experience is of no practical value; it is merely the name we give to our mistakes
We’re curious creatures, we humans; in our Western society at least, it is a common conceit to think we are so unique that we’ve each taken a different route to end up where we are; we’ve followed unexpected detours, braved gravel roads that wound through thick, unnamed forests; got lost innumerable times until we found…
-
Atmospheres
I’m certainly not well versed in Art; I know what I like, but I can seldom explain why, or even name the artist, let alone their style. Also, I would usually be just as pleased to have a poster reproduction of some famous work of art on my wall as I would the framed original…
-
The only hope for continued individualism is belonging
While I find myself immersed in a culture that values individualism, I am reminded of a quote from the famous polymath literary figure, Jean Cocteau, that ‘We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.’ There’s a lot to that. I have grown up in a society which treasures individualism, so I’m certainly not disputing a…