Sunday Papers: John M. Barry

"Emotion is not the absence of reason; emotion corrupts reason."


On the turntable:   Miles Davis, "Unreachable Station"

Further Down the Spiral

Twentieth Century terrorism was political, therefore, intellectual.  Twenty-first Century terrorism is predominantly religious, and therefore, anti-intellectual.  


On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Portrait"

Sunday Papers: William Wordsworth

“A mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.”

On the turntable: Bee Gees, "Mythology"

The Journey to Mt. Koya

My piece on climbing a pair of pilgrimage paths up Koya-san:

 https://www.kansaiscene.com/2020/09/the-journey-to-koya-san/


On the turntable:  "Palermo Shooting OST"

Sunday Papers: Christopher Rush

"[T]he most interesting people I'd ever met were those who had never travelled but had stayed in one place, and by coming to understand it had come to understand the universe; [...] this was because travel narrows the mind and is for those who constantly require external stimuli, lacking sufficient inner resources of their own. Travel, in a word, is for people who have nothing better to do."


On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Bluing"
 

Semi concious

A cicada lays on its back, legs wriggling in the air.  There seem to be a lot of dead semi today. These little bodies are the symptoms of the mortality of summer.

 

One has affixed itself to my front door.  I'll leave it there for awhile, not only as a lesson in impermanence, but as a reminder of how to live life:  short, but screaming loudly to the fullest.


On the turntable:  Tenor Conclave,  "Four Tenor Saxes"

Sunday Papers: Steve Dublanica

 

"Deep in my bones I’ve been reminded, over and over again, that I am a created thing –  that I didn’t will  myself into existence. In seminary, I was taught nothing, no person, planet, black hole or atom can explain why it exists in and of itself. Everything in the universe is contingent or depends on something else for being here and, if you wind back the clock and examine the great chain of causality, you’ll eventually arrive at a point where there must have been a first cause – that which created something out of nothing. Since that “prime mover” has no cause it must simply exist in and of itself – uncreated and beyond time – and makes everything that is real, well, real. That “something” is what every major religion, despite all their differences, calls God."

 
On the turntable:  The Misfits, "Box Set"

 

Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand

The universe is a construct invented to define the infinite. Man’s mind can’t grasp the idea that there is true infinity. It’s too intimidating.  It also reflects the whole Brahman Ishvara split in ancient vedantic philosophy.  

 On the turntable:  The Muggs, "The Muggs,"