Update April 28, 2023: The real tragedy is having had to make a decision in the first place.
Update April 28, 2024: The ultimate tragedy is having made the wrong decision through limited thinking: selfishness. Regret.
Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible – that ideas were deathless and truth immortal.
But that was true only in the subtlest sense, and not superficially true at all.
There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the non-moral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God’s and not Man’s, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind & speech & culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture.
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) by Walter Miller
“It is a long time since my last visit,” said Dumbledore, peering down his crooked nose at Uncle Vernon. “I must say, your agapanthus are flourishing.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K.Rowling
What else should our lives be but a series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.
David Malouf
UPDATE 2025: “Don’t Die!” is something Voldemort would espouse. “Stay Alive!” is closer to the wizard, Harry Potter”.
UPDATE 2024: Beliefs: 1. Women have a choice 2. No doubt there is a Highest power 3. Science seeks the Truth 4. Sex, like art, is what you make it 5. All good people are welcome to be a great country, yet scoundrels slide. It’s best to have a bias toward goodness unless proven otherwise.
UPDATE 2023: While the snail & snake proved to be problematic, and the mollusk impossible, at least I think I’m over Covid-19. Got one new YOGA pose out of all the suffering. It’s called Sleeping Bear; a good body position for taking the next breath while trying to sleep in the middle of the night.
From 2022: What is on his mind?
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, having nothing to do: once she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures in it. “What is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?” ~Lewis Carroll
Continuing education is vital to bridge serious gaps of basic knowledge, and to help keep up with advances and new information.
–The Art and Science of Aging Well
One hour drive freeway north, winding road south home.
Cross your eyes to see in stereo. Overlap the two images above to see this work of wooden sculpture art in three dimensions. It stands at the Castle Rock trailhead just off the parking lot.
See also 07-Wiff for the
encounter with a wild skunk
at the Castle Rock waterfall.