Monet Refuses the Operation Doctor, you say that there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist …
Living Philosophy
A gem from priest-turned-philosopher Pierre Hadot: Logic, physics and ethics distinguish themselves from one another when one speaks of philosophy, but not when one lives it. * …
Full of Wild Grace
Opposite a Post-Station, the Boat Moonlit Beside a Monastery My boat mirroring a clear, bright moon Deep in the night, I leave lanterns unlit. A gold monastery stands beyond green maples Here, a red post-tower beside white water. Faint, drifting from the city, a crow's cry Fades. Full of wild grace, egrets sleep. Hair white, a guest of lakes and rivers, I tie blinds open and sit …
Still Dizzy With Your Presence
[You who never arrived] You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don't even know what songs would please you. I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment. All the immense images in me—the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and un- suspected turns in the path, and those powerful lands that …
Practice Notes: Hasty Generalization, Parasite & The Australian Open
Parasite Recently saw Parasite—a brilliantly whacky and over-the-top satire on class relations. If you haven’t already, I’d say it’s worth checking out. The title of the film points to its primary theme and central ambiguity, expressed nicely here in one review: Who are the real parasites? The poor who attach themselves to the rich or the rich who suck the marrow of the poor? Or is the system …
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And I Entered
Late Ripeness Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before. I was …