Category: ethics

• June 17, 2013

  The quivering haiku

  ‘The brevity of haiku,’ writes R.H. Blyth in Haiku: Volume III–Summer/Autumn, ‘is not something different from, but a part of the poetical life; it is not only a form of expression but a mode of living more immediately, more closely to life.’ Here is Arakida Moritake, a sixteenth century Japanese poet cited in Alan Watts’…
• June 8, 2013

  Wandering babies in Topanga Canyon…

  Early in Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby exuberantly proclaims that there is no place he would rather live than in a cottage and, in particular, in a cottage that in all respects resembles the one the Dashwoods have let. Eleanor replies–come, come now, dear Willoughby–that the hallways are dark and the quarters are cramped. Would he really…
• June 4, 2013

  ‘Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Santa Fe’

  When the peacocks honked, I awoke and turned on my side and went back to sleep. I dreamed, off and on, that we were embedding mosaic tiles and brooches and seashells into the wooden stairs of the Santa Fe house in which we are staying. But instead of making good on the beautiful designs of…
• May 29, 2013

  Last day in Appalachia

  Last day in Appalachia. Mountain birds, tall grasses, more horses. Sing something, will you? Sing of a feather clinging to a window? Of the nights spent tossing words into the fire? Of the mornings spent meditating in calm? Of two young deer headed, in late spring, up the driveway? Looking young and perplexed, the pair…
• May 28, 2013

  Marx’s error and our own

  Final days in Appalachia. Reminder of Marx’s error, of ours since Francis Bacon. Tao Te Ching 29 (Feng and English translation): ‘Do you think you can conquer the universe and improve it? / I do not believe this can be done.’ The second stanza unearths the source of our error. ‘The universe is sacred. / You cannot improve it.…