The past, now.
- On flying
This morning, the orange dog is lying on my sheetless bed, and the sun from the window is on half his body while the other half is in the shadows. I have historical maps of old whaling towns now owned by rich people who don’t live in them on my walls. I also have a [...]
- Pitfalls of happiness
I am on a week-long meditation retreat with Jaimal, and Mitsu, several more lovely people, and teacher Steven Tainer (of Berkeley Buddhist Monastery and other places) in Morro Bay, California.
One of the issues I’ve been looking into is related to my moods, or modes of being.
I am strongly affected by light levels and [...]
- Simone
See it bigger.
- The new way of showing
I’m sitting in a hotel room in Paris and there are red flowers in the window and it’s raining. This hotel was recommended by the New York Times. It’s lovely, and Paris is lovely, but I’ve been so uncomfortable here. I’m terrified of French people. I’m living off some chocolates from Amsterdam which my boss [...]
- Cats and ants
What I see, when I stop to look, is so immense that it seems impossible to talk about. And yet, the entire vastness is reflected, in full, in every corner. Every moment contains all of history. The most mundane image — coming home on a hot day, I see the cat curled up and sleeping [...]
- Watchmen
(From my essay “Remembering the future: Time and memory in the Mars chapters of Watchmen,” 10 pages.)
Unlike dismantling weapons with one’s mind, which only he is able to do, Jon (Dr. Manhattan) seems to think that even ordinary humans are quite capable of perceiving time in the way he does (even, perhaps, of seeing the [...]
- Flaubert
Mysticism and Dogma in ‘A Simple Heart’ (A school assignment)
Flaubert’s short story, “A Simple Heart,” illustrates a path to the divine that is not dependent on rational understanding of religious dogma. However, the mystical path followed by the simple-hearted heroine of the story, Felicité, is supported by and intimately connected [...]
- Thomas Merton
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking [...]
- Belief
The ultimate is not an idea. It cannot be known, in the usual way. It can, sometimes, be felt. There is a physical sensation that corresponds to boundary-less-ness. A kind of glowy, floatiness, a feeling of permeability and connectedness. Presence. It’s not conceptual, and it’s not an understanding that can be attained through any kind [...]
- Secret
The secret is: there is no separation between the ordinary and the profound. And it’s no secret.
