Such Subtle Sapience!
I read an interesting statistic in the "Korea Herald" for Monday June 27th (2022):
"Majority of Americans hold Trump culpable for 1/6 riot."
I wonder who is held responsible for the other 5/6.
Brainstorming about history, politics, literature, religion, and other topics from a 'gypsy' scholar on a wagon hitched to a star.
I read an interesting statistic in the "Korea Herald" for Monday June 27th (2022):
"Majority of Americans hold Trump culpable for 1/6 riot."
I wonder who is held responsible for the other 5/6.
About a week ago, I fell out of bed. I don't know I did it, but the feat must have been a magnificent acrobatic one, for I met the floor in a full frontal position -- as though I'd been dropped from heaven face-first into the arms a lovely lass, except that I'd hit the floor instead. My wife jumped out of bed in alarm. I groaned, "That really hurt." I had a bump on my head and something like a scratch on the bump and stuff that felt like blood on the scratch, and something like a crust forming on the blood. Kind of like that old song that starts out with a hole in the bottom of the sea. From there, it's to infinity, and beyond!
And oddly enough, for about week from that accident, my Parkinson's symptoms were gone!
I called it "my little miracle."
But it went away.
"Thanks a lot, God. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Indian-giver be the name of the Lord."
What do you call the actions of the male offspring of a forest, given that the offspring have betrayed the forest through those actions?
In his new book on teaching, Kevin Kim draws attention to me and my influence, and he thanks me for my insights into homeschooling. In private, he says that my ideas can be found scattered throughout the book.
In other words, if the book fails, well, it was mostly Jeff's stupid stuff anyway.
The writer Ezra Klein offers an essay on Christianity in the NYT International on April 3rd, 2022:
"Christianity . . . is a religion that insists on the dignity of all people and centers the poor and the marginalized. . . . What I, as an outsider to Christianity, have always found most beautiful about it is how strange it is. Here is a worldview built on a foundation of universal sin and insufficiency, an equality that bleeds out of the recognition that we are all broken, rather than that we must all be great. I've always envied the practice of confession, not least for its recognition that there will always be more to confess and so there must always be more opportunities to be forgiven."
to do what Mack Hassler and Cara Gilgenbach did: Emanations for Special Collections.
"I think, therefore I am," quod he to me.
Scott Herschovitz wrote in a recent NYT issue (May 3, 2022) of an interesting question posed by his four-year-old son: "Is God real?"
The NYT International Edition recently (April 13, 2022) ran a somewhat garbled piece (cf. paragraph eight) on Ludwig Wittgenstein, who experienced his writing as a burden, and "sexuality as a burden, too, writing "frankly (and frequently) about his masturbation (or lack thereof), an activity he associated with not getting enough exercise. Sometimes commentary on work and sex would run together: "--Will I find the redemptive thought? Will it come to me??!!--Yesterday & today I masturbated."
If you have been expecting a reply to an email that you recently sent to me, your email may have gone missing in a virus-induced loss of emails, and if you think that this may have happened, then send your email again.
I nodded off while trying to type something:
D3qw Th
What in the world was I thinking?
Who said this?
Old age is when we find out what happened to us when we were young.
Kim Yong-kyu warns of the danger posed by the massive trash-disposal problem created by the extra medical litter polluting Korea's beaches as a consequence of the ongoing pandemic.
Although Kim doesn't emphasize this point, I note that this pandemic is not just littering Korea's beaches, it's changing the behavioral habits of aquatic creatures.
In a recent Korea Herald interview (February 23), Kim mentions: "I once saw a fish that got stuck in a single-use plastic glove while scuba diving."
This is actually rather alarming and deserves more attention, for if the sea's pollution problem is so dire (e.g., limited vision, limited oxygen) that fish themselves need to use scuba gear when swimming, then we are far gone indeed.
On this Valentine's Day, February 14, 2022, I surprised my wife with toast-hearts in bed. I had attempted to cut some toast-bread into hearts, then toast the hearts till they were crisp and fresh. The heart shapes, however, were not consistently in the shape of hearts. Perhaps they could be considered misshapen hearts, hearts battered about by the slings of outrageous fortune. Be that as it may, my wife scarcely recognized the heart shapes and didn't cotton on to why she was receiving them till I reminded her of the meaning behind today's most secular of Christian holidays. She then laughed, broke off a large chamber of one of the hearts, and she did eat . . .
Poking around in leftover thoughts scavaged on by the vultures of my intellect, I came upon this doctoral thesis by Adrian Platts:
Jacques Derrida, the Sacred Other and Seventh-day Adventism: Stumbling on the Creative Play of Différance in Genesis.
What Derrida means when he uses the word "sacred" is not immediately evident nor is it necessarily consistent. The French - sacré - clearly sharing a common root with the English, provides no obvious additional insight. In a biblical context, one stumbles on the word "holy" - the Hebrew root being transliterated qdsh. Whether in the verbal form (qadash) or as a noun (qodesh), the idea of holiness or the sacred is denoted - including the idea of being separated or set apart. Hence, the sacred stands in direct contrast to that which is "common or profane" as in Leviticus 10:10: "You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean" (NIV). Here "qodesh occurs as the antithesis of hol ('profane,' 'common')." (p. 36, ft. 144) (Platts adds another antithesis: blessing, curse. p. 36)
Derrida speaks of difference, of distinction between this and that, and somewhere that the sacred and the profane are distinguished as of between clean and unclean, which reminds us of the original act of separation between light and darkness, but why meaningless separations such as those demanded in Leviticus?
Or has Derrida said nothing of the sort?
Wittgenstein said that in the presence of that before which we cannot speak, we usst remmust werg emsinrem . . .
Language GamesI. Pour Derrida:This word is strictly aboutwhatever this word keeps out.II. Für Wittgenstein:This world is solely withinwhatever this world keeps in.
Language GamesI. Pour Derrida:This word is strictly aboutwhatever the word it leaves out.II. Für Wittgenstein:This world is solely withinwhatever the world it leaves in.
Hermeneutics of SuspicionI. Pour Derrida:This poem is strictly aboutwhatever in word it leaves out . . .II. Für Wittgenstein:The world is solely aboutwhatever in case it leaves out . . .
Perhaps that limerick I finished would work better without the profanity and a few other words I used. You judge:
KrypticketHeading home through a thick, thickety thicketgot me a dadgummed low-speed, speeding ticketfor driving too slow,so I floored it to go,
and flew faster than lickety split it!
Deconstructive Hermeneutics
Perhaps the limerick that I've been laboring on would work better with a few small changes:
KrypticketHeading home through the thick, thickety thicketgot me a goddamn low-speed, speeding ticketfor driving too slow,so I floored it to go,
and flew faster than lickety split it!
This poem probably works as a limerick now:
KrypticketHeading home through the thickety thicket,got a goddamned low-speed, speeding ticketfor driving too slow,so I floored it to go,
and flew faster than to lickety split it!
Drunk Gratitude
I've had but little alcohol at all,such awesome stuff as Skunk Butt's Hind-end Ale,and nothing drives truth home like alcohol,for standing vigil in this dreary vale.Thanks then to liquor's years of keeping mefrom making awful messes of myself,kept firm in its strong grip with dignity,a jug placed safe upon the sundries shelf.
This poem probably still needs more (un)working, even as a limerick:
Cryptic TicketHeading home through the thickety thicket,got a goddamned low-speed, speeding ticketfor driving too slow,so I floored to go,
and flew faster than lickety split it!
I contacted Vitasta to learn more about her poem:
I've been re-reading your poem and comprehending it better, but I want to be sure before I post any more blog entries. You start with Coleridge, a silly poet who identifies himself and Britain with the Mughal Empire, the Mongols who converted to Islam and conquered Hindustan, destroying its learning, its schools, its culture, and its architecture. The ancient trade routes were all but obliterated. And Kashmir, your Fatherland, underwent artillery siege. Something like that? (By the way, I liked the sudden shift from plain to rhymed couplets. Or near rhymes.)
I suppose so, it's a bit of fantasy as well. The first wave of refugees from Kashmir during the Mongol Era settled in Varanasi. But yes it's largely the current state of the homeland with the violence.
Still before Christmas . . . the poem still needs more (un)working, perhaps as a limerick:
Cryptic TicketHeading home back through Thickety Thicket,I got a damned low-speed, speeding ticketfor driving too slow,so I floored to go,
and flew faster than let on in cricket!
Still before Christmas . . . the poem needs more (un)working, perhaps as a limerick:
Cryptic TicketHeading home back through Thickety Thicket,I got a damned low-speed speeding ticketfor driving way too slow,so I floored the board at go,
and went so fast its speed simply wasn't cricket!
Before Christmas . . . the poem needs more (un)working.
Cryptic PoeticOn the way home through Thicket,I got a low-speed ticketfor driving way long too slow;so, I floored the board at go,went gone so fast at length lastthrough light-speeds beyond space passed.