Tag Archives: existentialism

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

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

Soaring ignorance

Soaring ignorance.  The problem with the problematization of other perspectives is that it takes too much for granted the knowledge of our own.  As though we are quite certain of ourselves!  As though we already discern, and have a clear and steady grasp of, our own boundaries!  As though we are not ourselves full of…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

Added Thoughts on Eternal Recurrence

To say that if he lived his life over again he wouldn’t do it now is insanity….  His living his life over again would guarantee the contrary–things being what they are. *** To run away from the recurrence comes with its own consequences, not one of them insignificant.  For instance, your running away comes back…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

A Note on Affect and Poetry

Part of the affective character of poetry is the tone from which it is spoken, and part of the tone from which it is spoken is the energy of the speech, its charge with wakefulness or tiredness.  I say the energy of the speech, rather than the speaker, as a style itself, the words themselves,…More