Category: parables
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Stone Soup, mutual dependency, and a new economic order
In “The Story of Stone Soup,” as Antonio Dias tells it, a wandering beggar comes upon a village. Hungry and tired, he goes to each door and is met with the same answer again and again. There is, he is told, not enough to go around, and the door, half-opened, is soon closed upon him.…
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On rites of passage and walkabouts
I met Peter Barnett, an Australian in his 50s, through Paul Monk, a former intelligence officer in Australia and presently a consultant and polymath, to whom I had, some months back, sent a note of praise about one of his papers on cognitive biases, to which he had replied with thanks, and because of which…
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On night visions and homecomings
On the way to the airport well before dawn, my middle sister told me about the recurring nightmares she’d had when she was a girl. There was the one about the angry man with the red eyes. The one about my mother who’d become the mean witch from the Wizard of Oz. And the one…
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On fata morgana
The boy I was in third grade headstrong for summer. The last day of school promising happiness, bringing sadness. Friends, acquaintances, occasional playmates all departing. Alone walking home. An error in desire. An intimation, surely, of errors to come.
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On cat days
When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; and when I am walking alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are sometimes elsewhere, for most of the time I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me. –Montaigne, Essays 1 Watch the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 