But Watt heard nothing of this, because of the other voices, singing, crying, stating, murmuring, things unintelligible, in his ear. With these, if he was not familiar, he was not unfamiliar either. So he was not alarmed, unduly. Now these voices, sometimes they sang only, and sometimes they cried only, and sometimes they stated only, […]
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A Keeper’s World
If the finder does not know whose it is, he takes it to the baron who is called Bularguchi, which is as much to say ‘keeper of lost property.” For, I would have you know that, if anyone finds a horse or a sword or a hawk or anything else and cannot discover the owner, […]
Book of Flowers: Entry # 2
Addiction /addictio/ Addiction is a wasting flower. There are thousands of species and hybrids. It blooms and fades as all flowers do, only it cannot fade alone. It takes with it the light and beauty of its surroundings. It blooms on a climbing plant that grows secretly, often without anyone noticing. It’s the flower that no […]
LOVE ACTUALLY: Splitting the Heart Break
Breaking up is all about sharing. It’s about dividing things like loss, pain, memories, blame, and sometimes shame. Nobody wants to end up with all the bad feelings. If it were possible to share these things fairly, Aristotle for whom justice is partly about proportion, would say each one should get what he or she […]
The Secret Life of the Imagination
The Imagination may perhaps be forgiven for occasional vagaries and for not keeping carefully within the limit of experience, since it gains life and vigor by such flights and since it is always easier to moderate its boldness than to stimulate its languor. But the Understanding which ought to think can never be forgiven for […]
Book of Flowers – Entry # 1
Infatuation (infatuātiō) A perfect name for a flower that cannot live beyond the dusk of its first and only dawn. It has the look of a rose, a foolish rose. But it takes on the posture of poppies. The petals are thin. At the slightest touch of the wind, it flaps like a possessed dervish. The […]
Dread..Dreadful…Dreadlocks
My stylist cringes at the word dreadlocks. “Simply call it locks,” she would caution, “There’s nothing dreadful about locks.” This quarrel over naming is not trivial. She realizes, like most philosophers do, that naming is everything. But what if there are no locks without the dread in them? What if locks are locks only after the work […]
Back To School Jingle
It’s been three months already, and I’m back to the grind. Nothing has changed. The struggle is familiar. The labor is still sweet. The hours are still piling up around me even as they are running away, leaving me with the queasy feeling that I’ll never catch up with them. As usual, the semester is […]
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