January 2012
2 posts
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor. And...”
– Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut
“[I see] all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is...”
– Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade. Kurt Vonnegut.
September 2011
1 post
Why our education isn't →
August 2011
6 posts
I have to go back. because they weren’t checkmarks
Giving 100% →
The American Student Today, Pt.2
This is part two of a two-part series of essays. If you missed part one, you can find it here. ~ ~ ~ So you’re stuck. There is a way to get un-stuck. This is where I should urge you to call your senator, or write a sternly-worded letter, but you and I both know our political economy has progressed beyond the democratic illusion. Answers to questions of great magnitude must sometimes be of...
The American Student Today, Pt.1
How frequently do you hear your friends and acquaintances mention how dissatisfied they are with their schooling? It has become ridiculously common that someone I know feels disgusted by either their chosen academic pathway or their everyday interaction with fellow students whose repulsive actions might as well be attributed to an equal amount of educational disgust. It’s true: students today...
July 2011
1 post
When was the last time you read something that wasn’t 140 characters?
May 2011
2 posts
“In spite of the fact that Socrates studied with all diligence to acquire a...”
– Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments
“Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil
March 2011
1 post
“Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct, which teaches a man to avoid the fire; as much as that, which teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation, and the whole economy and order of its nursery.”
[ David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ]
December 2010
1 post
From Back Porch
Dad: Beer please
Me: what
Dad: Beer please
June 2010
1 post
April 2010
1 post
“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a...”
– “Gooseberries”, by Anton Chekhov
March 2010
2 posts
“There are things that I remember, like walking through the damp grass in the...”
“The problem, though, is that as a society, we’ve come to see depression as...”
– (via The New York Times; http://tinyurl.com/yejcgno )
February 2010
4 posts
“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by...”
the truth is, we no longer want a city
“Something funny I have noticed, perhaps you have noticed it, too. You know what futurists and online-ists and cut-out-the-middle-man-ists and Davos-ists and deconstructionists of every stripe want for themselves? They want exactly what they tell you you no longer need, you pathetic, overweight, disembodied Kindle reader. They want white linen tablecloths on trestle tables in the middle...
everything falls together
milk & cookies in the snow + page 277 of The Catcher in the Rye
“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
January 2010
5 posts
What would we all do and say if we could somehow just…remember…that our hearts would suddenly stop beating in our chests?
Well, I have yet to write anything to the world this year. It actually feels good to take things a bit more slowly. I feel like I’ve been given a clean slate. There are a few things I want to think about today and forever.
I wonder if I’m not quite great at anything, but OK at most things. I wonder what it is inside of me that wants to come out. I wonder about how much to care,...
December 2009
3 posts
I am still very much in love.
We have become a less spacious people, less luxurious in the day-to-day. We have become a bothered culture, annoyed at time and its passing, thinking merely of how much must be done and in how small an instance. We have arrived at this despite our best efforts to attain luxury—to enjoy it all, all at once.
What if we have arrived here because, simply, we each have more than ever? How can...
“And will it ever come true? Is it not just a dream?”
“Ah,” he said, “now you do not believe it, you preach it and do not believe it yourself. Know, then, that this dream, as you call it, will undoubtedly come true, believe it, though not now, for every action has its law. This is a matter of the soul, a psychological matter. In order to make the world over anew, people themselves must turn onto...
November 2009
6 posts
“What is a compassionate heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the animals, for the demons, for all that exists. At the recollection and at the sight of them such a person’s eyes overflow with tears owing to the vehemence of the compassion which grips his heart; because of his deep mercy he cannot bear to hear or to look upon any injury or the...
What would the world look like if we all took our time; if we took the time to rest; if we took the time to rid ourselves of hunger; or, maybe, if we took the time to reflect?
What if, should the day prove beautiful, we all simply went out to play?
What if we could just lie in the grass, and hug the earth in thanks for all that we had reaped, and for all of its allowances too?
What if time just didn’t care anymore?
What if I told you that I loved you?
October 2009
7 posts
What good would freedom be if we had any?
We have the idea of marriage all wrong. We’ve all wanted it so much, we’ve done the worst thing ever: we’ve all gotten married.
Marriage needs to be understood as something far more rare*.
Perhaps we should treat it as something nearly miraculous, or something to be championed.
It seems to me that we have a severe disconnect between the system which has been set up to...
More Foxhole, just for Kevin.
...
And this is what it sounds like.
I have this dream when I’m awake, where nothing exists noiselessly around me, and the darkness flows over the long blades of grass, and I am on the hillside, with what seems to be miles before me. The evergreens are laced with moonlit snow, and behind them I hear a steam engine steady. The only thing that exists in those moments is my watchful eye, and the cold air that envelops me, and...
The Public Imperative →
What any sound mind already knows, and what most of America needs to know.
A song from the country part of my heart and...
September 2009
12 posts
Beautiful song by one of my favorite post-rock...
Every day I feel the weight of the world resting on my eyelids, trying to force them shut to the souls in need of healing. I swore to myself long ago that I’d die before I closed them.
Reducer
If ever I find myself nervous or afraid, I simply remind myself that the world is made up of merely singular human beings, all just as fragile and afraid as I, who had started at the same beginnings as any other.
Never fail to remember that we were all once children, and that we all, at some point, had to learn to be what we are today.
“In these troubling times, I hope we’ll worry about our neighbor first and ourselves last, and that we’ll pass forward the legacy whole generations have entrusted to us … humility and love for our fellow man.”
- John Thomas Ellis, September 16, 2009
It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.
- David Brooks, 9.15.09 Read the article here.
This is one of the bands that got me through this...
God
I love this glow. There’s something in the earth’s light that makes me the happiest man alive. I remember moments when I was younger, living in Kentucky, where I would be walking along and simply feel it surround me. It was always in those early evening times, as the day began to slow itself. The sky would glow and cover the earth with its ambient calm. That’s really what it...