“THAT’S NOT ONLY BRILLIANT — IT’S ‘why-didn’t-I-think-of-that’ brilliant.”
Category: Life
Each moment is different. Here are some of mine.
Waiting
OF ALL HUMAN EXPERIENCES, WAITING may be the least explicable.
We usually experience Time both as a series of events (“progression”) and an eternal Now (“duration”). Progression is as a pot slowly boiling or day growing late or stomach more hungry. “Duration” is the center of whatever moment (and all moments) we experience. These levels are so seamless as to first appear invisible. (Work with me here.)
Waiting suspends your attention — you’ve given your order, taken your place in line, tried to start the engine — now what? Continue reading “Waiting”
The Root Of All Our Problems
SLOPPY THINKING.
Monumental Question
“Do you honor the hole, or refill it with something?” (This may also apply to more than just the WTC memorial. Me, I vote for honoring the hole.)
Then
EVEN AFTER TEN YEARS, THE memories and pain are still fresh when I think of them. I don’t think of them often.
My habit in those days was to check the Ha’aretz news ticker with my morning coffee. “Hmm… soccer teams doing well, banks not so much, road accidents, airplane flies into World Trade Center. Wait. What?” Continue reading “Then”
Pithyism #16
THE WORLD LOOKS A LITTLE more friendly with something fragrant bubbling on the stove.
Saturday Night Owls, Sunday Morning Penguins
EVEN IF THERE’S LITTLE TO read — sometimes, especially if there’s little to read — nothing beats sharing an early morning newspaper with someone you love.
Ol’ Thinkypants in “Dang Prototypes”
“BUILDING A BETTER MOUSETRAP IS one thing. Testing it is something else.”
Generational Drift
BY OUR BEST CALCULATIONS, HISTORY began in Sumer when people first started writing things down (there are some examples of probable earlier scripts, but no one’s translated them yet). This would be about 6,000 years ago.
Let’s assume twenty-five years to the generation. That would be four generations per century. Six thousand years is sixty centuries is two-hundred forty generations.
Which means history began with your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandparents.
Kind of neat to think about.
Slouching Toward Tishrei
TODAY IS THE SECOND OF Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashana, and that fact lends the period an air of expectancy and overhaul.
The Jewish New Year is less a time for partying all night and more a time for reflection and making right, especially of our relationships. Have we wronged anyone? Hurt anyone? Been less than true or right or kind? Now’s the time to fix that.
So if I have in the past year treated you less than you deserve, or been blunt or flip where tender seriousness would have been better, please let me know. Life is too short not to live it fully, and it’s hard to live it fully if there’s an interpersonal problem sticking things up. As Elwood P. Dowd would say, “I’d rather be kind than right.” (I’d actually rather be both, but sometimes you can’t have everything.)
May your own annual journey to renewal and rebirth go as smoothly as it needs to be, and, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes, may you become no wiser than necessary.
Pithyism #4.5×10^9
IF SEDIMENTARY ROCK LAYERS ARE like pages of a book, archaeology is the art and science of compiling an index and table of contents.
Pithyism #10,000
A MODERN SENSIBILITY IS THE greatest impediment to understanding ancient traditions. (And sometimes vice-versa.)