Life has been hectic - meat space preoccupies more time than I care to say, but let it be known! To those who care, I mean!

A small mind reveals itself whenever, during conversation, they
attribute financial ills to the Gold Standard's end. Invariably, they
assert gold, because a "real thing," as opposed to "cash" which is
not a "real thing," would impose upon human finances a discipline they
imagine absent. If government… Read full post »

The other day, conversation turned to acquaintances who, despite camouflaging well enough, spend much time and money shooting intravenous drugs. What do they use? Whatever their hand finds to shoot, they shoot with their might - for there is no shooting in the grave, where they go.  Downers, mos… Read full post »

I have been on this particular track for a good long while now - for well over a decade - and still cannot think of anything that I find more pleasant aesthetically than a well made DJ set - these things for me exemplify the sublime Schopenhauer attributed to music: The… Read full post »

Platonic love? I am not a boy, you - not my instructor aside me with the warmth of your education pressed sharply at my side while sun light totters toward darkness, leaving the Parthenon sullied with grit of shadow, uttering rhetorical questions into my ear as events press toward mutual en… Read full post »

Some may suppose I do not care for my students, or the process of education - it is not the case, but I am not one hundred percent in love with them or it; service in unromantic catastrophe at first struck only chords of wrath within - but long enough suffering… Read full post »

I will now recall the night that a neighbor, an older black man long employed as a janitor by the local board, knocked on the door, asking to come in; my girlfriend at the time washed the dishes while he sat down on a chair, broke down, and cried: A big… Read full post »

Contrary to what some may suppose from perusing these writings, I am a teacher with a cult among some students - particularly among the sharper "thugs," because I exhibit more than average cognizance of their workaday concerns - such as food, shelter, and safety, which they pursue with avid perspicac… Read full post »

Of late, I've embraced the direct counseling and conferencing espoused by all the touchy feely advocates, but I teach in a school where discipline falls completely by the wayside in favor of maintaining as many charming men in school as possible no matter how gang-struck they are - all know it's… Read full post »

Anyone apprehending a story here should approach with care - I am wildly aware of how the truth can fit into many different tones - never mind phrases and sentences. Every sentence captures only an accent, and each accent struck may be amplified or otherwise modulated for effect. Further, once writte… Read full post »

A long term bearer of ADHD, or simply so alienated from workaday life as to require large doses of drugs to make its hue and cry tolerable, I take a generous dosage of amphetamines everyday. Truly, as I said to my students, "If you had to listen to you talk every… Read full post »

Some say he knows a way of working words
Like Hephaestus' hammer red hot iron:
Fold them, flatten them, stretch them - love them, kill them –
Loves them as he kills them, these hard won words?
Butcher them like bullocks groaning in red gore
That stains temple floors in stark hot red spume –
Fro/… Read full post »

As a teacher, I know how to kow-tow toward authority and its glorious tropes - hail the flag, hail equality, hail opportunity, hail freedom, hail the individual - but more importantly, anyone who believes that the mission of public schools - or any educational institution - genuinely aspires to fruct… Read full post »

Hello XXXX

I hope I did not appear overly curt, being tired; I wished, if possible, to return to the question of admiration, competition, and so forth - on one hand, I revel in people admiring my intelligence - but I've observed that in the past, they, too, appear animated by the… Read full post »

I always thought this among the top tent thesis statements of all time:

Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, wants variety and spirit. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.

I would say it's… Read full post »

In the National Gallery, a couple sat some time quietly reverent before a work by Jasper Johns, a miasma of targets smashed with vibrant colors across the canvas, and they looked, then moved on. All those works warehoused, an overwhelming profusion culled from the greatest epochs of art, displayed fr… Read full post »

E: Reason is important, probably even essential for the "good life," but taken by itself reason is insufficient, even dysfunctional and counter-productive of virtue. Reason without the governing force of a moral conscience produces monsters that lurk in the dark places of the human heart and then pou… Read full post »

"He's become so pleasant, a person you want to have around," his grandmother said upon their return from DC. Pleasant to have around. Civilized, in so many words. The sort of man that could wander about cavernous galleries enthralled in Van Dyks, pietas, and the marvel of his fellow man. Something… Read full post »

The more I read, the more I dig in, the more pleasure I take in the
hidden intricacies of 2666. At present, I have been reading two
different translations of Parzival, which "can stand with the great
masterpieces of the world" as it wrestles with "the most important
aspects of human existence, worldly an… Read full post »

A writer, deciding this place full of philistines, morons, and egotistical prats, declared their patience at an end - thus they packed up stakes, wished a plague upon our keyboards, and bounced. Well and good, I say, but in response, I must ask, "When has it ever not been the case?"… Read full post »

My uncle recently released a reconstruction of Gilgamesh, which he undertook with fidelity when he wished and reconstructed from what evidence satisfied him. Why did he do it? It began as a game, then became something more - a thing he undertook because the process of doing it pleased him, nothing… Read full post »

Returning  to books, the dark age: There is no reason that
Shakespeare's "superior" might not live today, except if he arrived,
we're too much a slave to Will to apprehend him: Too many treatises,
books, productions: Forests of blather hiding the sapling of rare
device rarer seen: Too blinded by… Read full post »

It's as one person said: If you don't enjoy the process in and of
itself while writing or creating any sort of object, whatever the medium,, there's no reason for you to do it. Period. Nothing will ever
be perfect - not one thing without flaw if fairly considered. Thus,
it's… Read full post »