AWARENESS: NOW HERE, OR NOWHERE.
Continue reading “Pithyism #210a”
Category: ?
Free of labels, which is also a good attitude.
5 Thoughts: 32x
1. IT’S THE MAGNIFICATION THAT CHANGED history.
2. When Galileo Galilei first-lighted* his telescope more than four hundred years ago, he didn’t know that simple act would begin a new era for humanity. He certainly didn’t know that by deducing that Earth was not the center of the Universe, and daring to proclaim the evidence of his senses and reasoning, he would be convicted by the Inquisition. So it goes, and sometimes tragically. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: 32x”
Read This (E)Book
THIS IS WHAT COMES FROM puttering about in a small morning with nothing else to do (thanks, PKD, for the reference): “Little-t truths for our and every time; a considerable consideration of considerings.”
Pithyisms is, thanks to Smashwords, my second published e-book — a collection of 100+ original sayings that I have been letting drop here and there over the years. It is available in multiple formats, free of charge (at least for now), and at this writing (2105.23) is a “Featured New Release” to boot. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did composing it.
5 Thoughts: How I Spent My College Intuition
1. THEY SAY THAT IF YOU can remember certain events or associated places, it means you were never there; space-time knots whose experience is colored by the hazy circumstances of the experiencer. Case in point: the Neo-Pagan Society of Diablo Valley College, c. 1980-83ish.
2. NPS-DVC was the singular creation of “Chief Druid Zoro X.R. Troll” (who knows who he is but may not want you to): a seriously amiable poet attending Pleasant Hill’s then tuition-free community college with an eye toward finding kindred spirits. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: How I Spent My College Intuition”
Message in a Battle
… Each of us sits alone within the cell of our subjective awareness. Now and then we receive cryptic messages from the outside world. Only dimly comprehending what we are doing, we compose responses, which we slip under the door. In this way, we manage to survive, even though we never really know what the hell is happening.”
— John Horgan
“Different Models for Different Muddles”
EACH PERSON’S PERCEPTION OF TRUTH is different. This one has a broader outlook, this one a narrow outlook. But the sincerity of each one’s devotions is all that counts.”
— Reb Nosson: Plato to Rebbe Nachman’s Socrates
Look Upward: Angles!
A young person who goes out and sees this great conjunction now can potentially see the next close one in 2080. It’d be a nice connection between generations, one that makes you think about all those who have seen these conjunctions in the past–and those who will glimpse it in the future.”
— Astronomer Patrick Hartigan on tonight’s celestial event
5 Thoughts: A Celebration of Bags
0. WHO AMONG US HAS NOT searched for the perfect shouldered carryall? Here are five of my favorites:
1. In high school, I owned a black, one-pocket, snap-closure American naval officer’s bag suitable for a notebook, pens, paperbacks and other adolescent contraband. I carried that thing around town, in caves and forests, and up hilltops and tall buildings. It finally developed more holes than I could repair, and made way for… Continue reading “5 Thoughts: A Celebration of Bags”
Waiting for the Apocalypse, or Something Like It
AND SO, EARTH CONTINUED TO shake off the irritants that had plagued her since the rise of the Industrial Age…”
— Barbatus the Elder
Bio Mass
I AM A FANTASY WRITER; that is to say, I fantasize about people reading my writings.”
–Your author, in a truth-pensive mood
5 Thoughts: Seminal v. Derivative
1. ONE OF THE CHICKEN-OR-egg challenges of modern media (social and traditional) is their pervasive sense of nonlinear immediacy, by which I mean the everything-at-once flattening of the artistic landscape.
Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Seminal v. Derivative”
Fandom as Cargo Cult
IF WE BUILD IT, THEY will come — again.
First, you need to know what a “cargo cult” is: a folk religion among some groups of Melanesian Islanders who believed that they could attract cargo-carrying airplanes by engaging in sympathetic magic. They got this idea during World War II, when real airplanes (both Allied and Japanese) visited these islands and airdropped actual cargoes — food, weapons, clothing, medicine, and the like. After the war, the planes stopped coming. But the islanders, convinced that the proper conditions would bring more goods, built airstrips (in some cases, complete with landing lights) and otherwise mimicked certain behaviors they thought would achieve their goals. It’s a powerful communal buzz, and easy to get lost in. Continue reading “Fandom as Cargo Cult”