Sep 14 2007
I’m listening to a musician, new to me. Sam Prekop… heard his music playing as i passed by a small shop. i walked in and asked… who is that. Sam Prekop. Oh.
So now i’m listening to Who’s Your New Professor. I love it. I love the acoustic guitar. And the acoustic piano. The tone… the depth of the music. And listening, i hear the electric elements there too. but it is the acoustic parts that are warmest, most intimate.
Sep 08 2007
I was raised in a violent atmosphere. Our house was not filled with the physical violence that leads to bodily injury. But there was physical violence that results in psychological trauma and much verbal and emotional abuse. It’s difficult growing up knowing that one is not good enough, that one’s talents and skills are not appreciated, and that who one is less important than who one might be perceived to be.
My father was an angry man. While practicing his bowling in the living room and simultaneously arguing with my mother, he “accidentally” threw his ball through the living room wall. Because he was having trouble with the Christmas tree one year, the tree was thrown through the plate glass window in front of which it was to supposed to stand. That his anger did not produce physical violence against his children is testament to my mother’s fortitude. But there was always the mental abuse. All four of us kids are just starting to cope with that…40 years later.
Sep 02 2007
According to one way of telling this story, the world began in 1641 with the following words, as translated from the Latin:
Some years ago now I observed the multitude of errors that I had accepted as true in my earliest years, and the dubiousness of the whole superstructure I had since then reared on them; and the consequent need of making a clean sweep for once in my life, and beginning again from the very foundations, if I would establish some secure and lasting result in science.
— Rene Descartes, 1641
The world ended — again, on one way of telling this story — as follows:
On or about December 1910, human nature changed.
— Virginia Woolf, 1924
In this essay I want to explore the meaning of those two passages, and to think about where we stand now in relation to them. Let’s ask what we should do after the end of it all, here at the end of the end of the world.
(Pictures, too! Below the fold.)
Sep 02 2007
Someone once asked me what Taoists believe. I don’t know what Taoist’s believe. I can only know what I believe. It’s not like we have churches or need people to tell us what the writings mean. The mental game we’re playing here is to figure it out for ourselves. There is no accomplishment in blind obeisance to someone else’s interpretation. I think I can say that all Taoist are on the same page up to just about here.
The first chapter of the Tao te Ching (loosely, Book of the Way…and yes, we have a book) tells us we are on our own when it comes to interpreting existence. That certainly includes the meaning of the words in the book. Several parts of the book discuss the futility of trying to teach the Tao to anyone else.
But I digress…