- Poem attributed to the initials W.L. (Epigraph, Chapter 6)
Arthur E. Shipley, Life: A Book for Elementary Students
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Withered Leaves
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Subtle and Evanescent
- Leonard Koren (1948 - )
Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Sentient Soul
- Ludmila Uliţkaia (1943 - )
""Forms acquire meaning for us
only because we recognize in them
the expression of a sentient (fühlend) soul.
Spontaneously, we animate
(beseelen) every object.
- Heinrich Wölfflin (1864 - 1945)
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
A Self-correcting System
- George Carlin (1937 - 2008)
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Transcendent Patterns
- Oliver Sacks (1933 - 2015)
Friday, December 20, 2024
Imperfect Concepts
and change there can be no Tao. In
reality there is nothing in the universe which
is completely perfect or completely still;
it is only in the minds of men
that such concepts exist."
- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Nature's Elegance
more intricate, more
elegant than what
we are able to
imagine."
- Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
The Demon-Haunted World
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Passage of Time
- Beth Kempton (1977 - )
Wabi Sabi
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Life Implicit
- David Bohm (1917 - 1992)
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Order and Disorder
It’s possible also that both are decoys, illusions intended to disguise the erosion of both books and systems. It is no bad thing in any case that between the two our bookshelves should serve from time to time as joggers of the memory, as cat-rests and as lumber-rooms."
- Georges Perec (1936 - 1982)
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
Friday, September 06, 2024
Niagara Concealed
Sunday, May 28, 2023
Doors and Landscapes
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Serene Illumination
- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)
The Art of Just Sitting
Friday, March 03, 2023
I Am
- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Translation by Stephen Mitchell (The Enlightened Heart)
Wednesday, March 01, 2023
Into Another Intensity
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning."
- T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
Friday, February 24, 2023
Gentle Traces and Imprints
the present never lasts.
Time glides by without a trace.
Who can be wise in this constant flux?
I take each day as its own
sustaining myself until I’m released.
After so much wandering,
I have arrived here—
twenty years seen through a cloud."
- Taigu Ryokan (1758 - 1831)
The Kanshi Poem of Taigu Ryokan
Thursday, February 02, 2023
Photograph-Not-Taken, Taken
without the perpetual transmutation
of all the forms of life,
the world would be static,
rhythm-less, undancing, mummified."
- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
Postscript. This lovely image was captured early this morning both before and after my wife and I took our after-breakfast walk through the neighborhood (a habit we picked up during the early "stay at home" phase of the pandemic, and which we still try to do whenever our almost-back-to-normal work schedules permit). The "before" part consisted of me simply noticing - then, more deeply "seeing" - this beautifully rhythmic dance of half-decayed leaves on display on a corner of a neighbor's lawn. More to the point, and by sheer coincidence, literally seconds before I "saw" this static-yet-living form, my wife and I were chatting about a book I reviewed over 10 years ago called Photographs Not Taken. As the title suggests, the book is a collection of short stories by photographers describing images that, for whatever reason, were never taken; of course, the book itself contains no photographs! I reminded myself of the (lessons in this) book after heading out on our walk without my camera (not even an iPhone!) and immediately commiserating about "another gorgeous dramatic cloud-ridden sky gone to waste!" A split-second later, my eyes fell on the small patch of leaves you see above. What did the intrepid photographer do? Nothing. I merely continued commiserating: "Oh, if only I had brought my iPhone!" (How has my muse put up with me over the decades?) The "after" part of the image started about a mile or so later, as my wife and I returned to our house to start our workdays; the book - and the siren call of the little patch of leaves - were both still firmly on my mind. I grabbed my "walk around" camera, ran back to our neighbor's corner house, and made sure that, today at least, this was going to be a "photograph-not-taken taken." 😊
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Limited Piece of the Whole
temporally limited piece of the whole,
what we call the 'Universe.'
He experiences himself and his
feelings as separate from the rest,
an optical illusion of his consciousness.
The quest for liberation from this bondage
[or illusion] is the only object of true religion.
Not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming
it gives us the attainable measure of inner peace."
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
Google's translation of Einstein’s original quotation
Sunday, November 06, 2022
Signatura Regrum
all reasoning is also intuition,
all observation is also invention.