of those who wear fake some/any/everything African cat skin...leopard, cheetah, panther...
if they cant kill it, skin it and prep it...they nonetheless merit being eaten by it
Thursday, January 31, 2013
China's cultural revolution of the air
seems that -- also reflecting on being there in July 2012...
the major cities of China are showing a "cultural revolution" of the air and environment.
then they destroyed much of their past for a while, now their present.
the major cities of China are showing a "cultural revolution" of the air and environment.
then they destroyed much of their past for a while, now their present.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
addenda to Dante: bibliocide
the reported burnings of manuscript collections in Timbuktu is somehow worse than a human massacre. people die. killed or naturally. but do books have even a believed justice "post-mortem"?
and books and manuscripts burned destroys their contained lives and ideas of the past, the contents possible for learning and edification. and it is perhaps more the ideas, or the stories and searching systems of the world on the pages than the physical rarities -- but also these rare pieces, anchors of the past -- that are lost and mournable.
there have been book burnings for ages, even before trying to understand the a-historic, anti-historic (pre-historic?) mentalities who would proudly be destructive iconoclasts -- but remember England during the Civil War, the anti-religious destruction in the early USSR, Alexandria's library, burning books at Nuremberg,...
Prefer to condemn such an act as those of "primitive" (though this is too simplistic) human, impassioned ignorance; to comprehend revenge within the Inferno of Dante's Comedy.
and if there are therein none who committed bibliocide, let this be added.
and books and manuscripts burned destroys their contained lives and ideas of the past, the contents possible for learning and edification. and it is perhaps more the ideas, or the stories and searching systems of the world on the pages than the physical rarities -- but also these rare pieces, anchors of the past -- that are lost and mournable.
there have been book burnings for ages, even before trying to understand the a-historic, anti-historic (pre-historic?) mentalities who would proudly be destructive iconoclasts -- but remember England during the Civil War, the anti-religious destruction in the early USSR, Alexandria's library, burning books at Nuremberg,...
Prefer to condemn such an act as those of "primitive" (though this is too simplistic) human, impassioned ignorance; to comprehend revenge within the Inferno of Dante's Comedy.
and if there are therein none who committed bibliocide, let this be added.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
smoke signals in Moscow
close (but irritated) daily observation of smoke in Moscow signals with ~90+% accuracy that that someone smoking is "a no one". part of the crowd.
Russia will be healthier when these passive Russians have been manipulated to smoke less. that they can or will not stop themselves -- even for better health -- is clear at any moment of the day or night in Moscow.
Russia will be healthier when these passive Russians have been manipulated to smoke less. that they can or will not stop themselves -- even for better health -- is clear at any moment of the day or night in Moscow.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Dostoevsky † and Nietzsche †
studying their stories...were not the lives and works of eg Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in their own ways a self-sacrificing
the missing links
on the level of psyche, there do seem to be "missing links".
even some walking the streets of Moscow
even some walking the streets of Moscow
Plato's cave in Moscow
from Plato's cave to the crowded new modern malls of Moscow, most are now at most dreaming their lives away
Friday, January 25, 2013
missing God?
sitting in cafes or walking in malls here it often seems less that God is missing than that He isn't missed
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
nationalisms too shall pass
national(istic) human social identities arose in history, and they too shall pass from history.
but few of those passionately patriotic want to know this. thus they remain asleeping in these their beliefs.
but few of those passionately patriotic want to know this. thus they remain asleeping in these their beliefs.
another motley spellbinding inauguration
from inside Spaso house -- amidst all those with ties and high heels -- watched the inaugural of President Obama...a polite Steppenwolf...
certainly one can find in the rhetoric of the Senator, the woman (who seems to have had little idea what an invocation is, but who nonetheless) gave the invocation, as well as Obama's address, some idea(s) or other(s) to dreamily live by.
but not one of these gave a talk of any real coherence and order. eg God was included more like a sun-god: distant but warming...and apparently liberally willing to be claimed as approving of such somnabulistic unclear speaking about "Him" in the clear light of mid-day, and how "He" blesses this and that of America...
and all the various re/acquired elements of the American credo were restated in one combination or other: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of...", "government of, by...", "liberty and ...", freedom, equality.... (in relation to Hesse's Steppenwolf: they are "for everyone"...not for "madmen".)
a kind of smorgasboard of inspirational wordings: take and remember what you want Americans.
but do not try to make much sense out of these words. they were more for lulling than reasoning. a few contrasting theologies were hinted; variations ontic and political anthropologies; varied social-political theories mixed....
a forgettable commemoration. all seemed adequately and politely spellbound by the motley rhetoric of America. more traditional local/national anesthetic than any clear statement of the American state.
certainly one can find in the rhetoric of the Senator, the woman (who seems to have had little idea what an invocation is, but who nonetheless) gave the invocation, as well as Obama's address, some idea(s) or other(s) to dreamily live by.
but not one of these gave a talk of any real coherence and order. eg God was included more like a sun-god: distant but warming...and apparently liberally willing to be claimed as approving of such somnabulistic unclear speaking about "Him" in the clear light of mid-day, and how "He" blesses this and that of America...
and all the various re/acquired elements of the American credo were restated in one combination or other: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of...", "government of, by...", "liberty and ...", freedom, equality.... (in relation to Hesse's Steppenwolf: they are "for everyone"...not for "madmen".)
a kind of smorgasboard of inspirational wordings: take and remember what you want Americans.
but do not try to make much sense out of these words. they were more for lulling than reasoning. a few contrasting theologies were hinted; variations ontic and political anthropologies; varied social-political theories mixed....
a forgettable commemoration. all seemed adequately and politely spellbound by the motley rhetoric of America. more traditional local/national anesthetic than any clear statement of the American state.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
accursed answers, проклятые ответы
after some more than 15 years of periodic querying,
searching, wondering the whence of the Russian expression proklyatye voprosy, accursed,
damned questions, today came upon the apparent source...in a 1858 prominently published translation of an 1853 German poem.
and that source leads back into the very deepest questions in
all of "Western" history.
a deep pedigree.
another rare day of the goldener Spur in Moscow
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Vivaldi saves
on abandoning after years the settled, safe but what I had come to be feel was shallow life of California -- a kind of pleasant "inner desert" -- to come "one way" to Russia in '94, the move left me in a kind of mourning despair, and the first year through the cold Moscow winter was among the "darkest" in my life. rationing. disorder. uncertainty. ...
somehow -- was it on the fuzzy SW radio or at the Conservatory? -- I heard the second movement of Vivaldi's concert for 2 violins in A minor, and its principle theme was immediately consoling in an inexplicable but unquestionable way.
during the first year especially, I would very often walk around the snow-covered empty streets and paths of the hospital where Dostoyesky had lived as a child, and -- most times, but not always, being able to call the theme up inside -- inwardly or actually hum this theme...again and again and again... and this for days, for months...
letters from Havel, Solzhenitsyn and Page Smith had helped...but there was nothing in word, book or church which aided me like those notes.
and I listened to it inwardly, or voiced it, over the subsequent years when need came.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1k_yexUE6s (second movement: 3:54-7:24)
somehow -- was it on the fuzzy SW radio or at the Conservatory? -- I heard the second movement of Vivaldi's concert for 2 violins in A minor, and its principle theme was immediately consoling in an inexplicable but unquestionable way.
during the first year especially, I would very often walk around the snow-covered empty streets and paths of the hospital where Dostoyesky had lived as a child, and -- most times, but not always, being able to call the theme up inside -- inwardly or actually hum this theme...again and again and again... and this for days, for months...
letters from Havel, Solzhenitsyn and Page Smith had helped...but there was nothing in word, book or church which aided me like those notes.
and I listened to it inwardly, or voiced it, over the subsequent years when need came.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1k_yexUE6s (second movement: 3:54-7:24)
Friday, January 18, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
"life, liberty and the pursuit of..."
...wealth?
...health?
...knowledge?
...insight?
...truth?
...god?
...happiness?
...health?
...fame?
...wisdom?...knowledge?
...insight?
...truth?
...god?
...happiness?
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Dostoevsky's life, depressing?
a personality test:
reading the details of Dostoevsky's life is depressing or consoling?
contrary to what several Russians supposed, his life story -- in Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time -- rather consoled than depressed.
certainly kin and counsel to any real "Steppenwolf"
reading the details of Dostoevsky's life is depressing or consoling?
contrary to what several Russians supposed, his life story -- in Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time -- rather consoled than depressed.
certainly kin and counsel to any real "Steppenwolf"
he who dies with the most toys, loses
how many are not thoughtlessly gathering much more than they need or use?
but this is good, the world economy needs them.
but this is good, the world economy needs them.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Bildungskosmos?
Frashokereti (Yasna 30.9)
Romans 8:20
Scola animarum (Origen)
Theatrum Mundi (Epictetus, et al)
Life is a school (William Rounesville Alger, et al)
Vale of Soul-Making (Keats)
Bildungsleben
Bildungsgeschichte
Bildungskosmos?
Gottesspur
Amidst the satisfied, drowsy, new, post-Communist consumer life of Moscow, eg those who carpe coffee at a Starbucks, and even with discussing Syria (Qaddafi's or Mubarak's fate?) with a well-known correspondent (who is for hours each day immersed in reading) the very serious political trials and tribulations in the world...a text of Harry Haller's "Gottespur":
"Life for Dostoevsky was, as it was for Keats, "a vale of soul-making," into which Christ had come to call mankind to battle against the death of immersion in matter and to inspire the struggle toward the ultimate victory over egoism." -- Frank, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, (2010), p. 411.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Saturday, January 5, 2013
unworldly survival fare
the internet's contents, millions of blogs, words words words infinitely increasing, can not but present an impossible horizon of variety. but, as to depth, a verticality in the great horizontality...
for someone truly in a "Steppenwolfian" state, achievement of level, relation to the world -- and not as some self-romanticization or bravado -- the isolation and aloneliness can only be relieved by what Hesse had Harry Haller describe as the golden thread amidst the mundane and satisfied middling -- by pursuits, studies, observations...that give some insight into the (possibly meaningless) human condition, world and life.
in medias res...the one-volume Frank bio Dostoyevky, readings of the history of "the Sixties", et al, are the kind of unworldly fare that makes it possible to survive in this world. as a "Steppenwolf".
so that philosophy is less a practice of dying, than trying to live in another world while confined embodied to this one. even if the "other world" does not (of a certainty) exist.
for someone truly in a "Steppenwolfian" state, achievement of level, relation to the world -- and not as some self-romanticization or bravado -- the isolation and aloneliness can only be relieved by what Hesse had Harry Haller describe as the golden thread amidst the mundane and satisfied middling -- by pursuits, studies, observations...that give some insight into the (possibly meaningless) human condition, world and life.
in medias res...the one-volume Frank bio Dostoyevky, readings of the history of "the Sixties", et al, are the kind of unworldly fare that makes it possible to survive in this world. as a "Steppenwolf".
so that philosophy is less a practice of dying, than trying to live in another world while confined embodied to this one. even if the "other world" does not (of a certainty) exist.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
W
W -- aka President George W. Bush -- may have disappeared from the scene and news inside the USA since his Presidency, but the effects of his Presidency still are present, not only in great problems with American taxes and government funding, but with the tremendous war debts and ill-advised US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
history will judge him as one of the bottom five Presidents in US history, as is the mentality he (re-)presented.
history will judge him as one of the bottom five Presidents in US history, as is the mentality he (re-)presented.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Americanization -- Yee haa?
spell it yeehaw in the original American cowboy movies and TV...the Russian (by voice a) late teen male, just a bit ago yelled it from the window of a car driving by, like a here new whistling one sometimes can hear calling a dog, or a familiar US college-fraternity horn-honk pattern on the streets of Moscow...or the 4 year boy, some years ago, who, when something dropped, spontaneously exclaimed: "oops"...
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