Sigh. I finally got around to reading the Edge of Reason last night.
Despite the fact that lots of people on the Internets seem to think this was the wonderful book I was expecting, it just didn’t work for me. The plot was kind of interesting, but the rest of the craft just wasn’t there.
The [...]
I had one of those shocking epiphanies today. I realized, seriously, completely, viscerally, that I am going to die someday.
There was no hair-raising event, no near death experience, nothing dramatic. Just a realization that hit me during a very long drive, when I had some time to think about what it meant. Harlan Ellison is [...]
While that last piece was read at Santayana’s death, I’m slightly more enamoured with a piece he wrote on the death of a friend, simply entitled “To W.P.“.
It’s not too long, so you could go read the whole thing. Here are two bits that particularly resonate with parts of my personal philosophy:
Another, if I would, [...]
When I turned 20, I was one of the youngest of my group of friends. I had watched them all make a big deal out of it, and I laughed. 20 was no problem.
When i turned 30, I was one of the youngest of my group of friends., although I had made a number of [...]
You know what I want, that is ridiculously expensive, and that I can in no way practically justify, but which I still have a serious hankering for?
A sword cane.
At least twice a week for the last couple of months, I’ve spent some time looking at the photos at the Burger Knives sword cane pages–especially the [...]
I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
Ariwara no Narihira (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.
Yamabe no [...]
I don’t know why it is1 but in the late part of December every year, I start to feel some sort of compulsion to read some Bukowski. (As an aside, my mental picture of Bukowski doesn’t match any of his photos–it’s Henry Chinaski.)
I read different stuff every year–Bukowski has a decent-sized oeuvre–but I always start [...]
Today I picked up a poppy at the grocery store, and probably severely over-donated as part of that interaction.
I can’t help myself–one of the things that completely crack through my stern and manly1 exterior is the “uniformed old men with dignity” thing. I see that guy, who’s probably a hundred years old, clearly making a [...]
I was a bit too enervated to worry about blogging, or reading blogs, last night, so I woke this morning to find the entire Internet plastered with the news that Madeleine L’Engle had died. (See link list below).
I know exactly when I read my first L’Engle book: it was A Wrinkle In Time, in the [...]
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