Tag Archives: despair

The Breath of Meaninglessness

The breath of meaninglessness comes as easily, as unaccounted for, as graciously as the breath of meaning, both like a breeze across the damp swamp, a breeze that suddenly gives to the stagnant air life, direction, energy.               What else do you want out of this, she asked.  When she said the words it was…More

Cultures of Thought

Each thought, and the cultivation of that thought, has its proper time.  Without cultivation, a thought may visit, may inspire, may suddenly illumine, but chances are it will not form the basis of a culture, a practice, a labor.  Labor not only in the sense of work and craft, the honing of skill and the…More

not going back

Normal, new or old…is a disaster. This video captures the heart beating inside us in May, 2020.More

Zwischen

        For Monica Geers-DahlWe meet and you tell methat you are a visionary.Now the visions plop downfor our inspecting gaze,or like a plaything, for usto play with and fondle,or like a maze to explore,or like a door to enter,or like a trembling child,we have to console herin her shivering, or likea mild breeze we feelcoolly…More

144,000

Before that world ended, our project as some of us called it, we felt the horizon closing in on us at first as some distant foreboding, an event we had calculated, could imagine, make plenty of blockbuster films about, but that seemed so distant as though it could never possibly arrive for us, the safe…More

In praise of stupidity

In praise of stupidity.  Stupidity is not always to be looked down upon, even by philosophers, perhaps especially by philosophers if they want to leave no stone unturned, if they truly want to be lovers of the plural and ever-multiplying manifestations of human and other things.  Sometimes it is precisely stupidity that carries with it…More

Cosmic Dance – A (Short) Dialogue

A: Why are you dancing around the subject– B: I’m not dancing– A: Yes you are, you said that life is meaningless but that we are not meaningless, how can that– B: Let me ex– A: No! You called it an “explanation” before when you said that even though life itself is meaningless, we can…More

Some Day – For Martin

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Martin To be black in the United States during the holidays is already a trial. Traditional expressions of these holidays seldom involve black families, as most American media and imagery are already graded low when it comes to diversity. The holidays celebrated…More

On Forgiveness

Even when we have been hurt, even then we are to forgive the one who hurt us?  We were gathered around him as a flock gathers around a post–hungry or pensive.  The desert heat was mitigated slightly by a gracious cloud overhead which, instead of simply passing by and leaving us with unshielded fire, kept…More

The uncanniest feelings

The uncanniest feelings are those that bring with them an uncertainty as to what is being felt.  It starts, for example, with a sense of lightness, a sense of flight, of being turned upside-down.  Some would say they are queasy, others in great anticipation (whether for the dreaded or desired may not be clear), others…More

Storms of Change

Storms of change.  With all the talk about change being everywhere and being the only constant, you would think that we would be more tolerant, even to the point of accepting, of the change involved in changing into a vicious or an insane version of ourselves.  But we are not.  We wish, above all things,…More

Getting lost in AI will have us lose our own possibilities

Getting lost in AI will have us lose our own possibilities. So AI can paint and create digital images. What can we paint? What happens to us and with us when we paint, or when we don’t paint? So AI can write poetry and academic essays. What are we preparing to write, and why? The…More

Turning to Poetry

Since, as a philosopher, I want to understand how we are to live with mortal meaning, with meaning that does not contain as a part of its nature constancy, I turn to poetizing to get glimpses of the sudden eruptions, the lifespan, and the death of meanings.  Does this imply that poetizing cannot endure those…More