“God himself culminates in the present moment.” (Thoreau) What is “now” for? What if you “know” the future? Fairy tales and wishes of complete knowledge are always disastrous. If you know the hour of your…
Posts tagged walden
Bubbles Like a Burning Glass
It takes little effort to find, all throughout the vastness of the digital nowhere, blog posts reproducing the words of Henry David Thoreau, in any season, on any natural or political phenomena. And here too…
Now You Know What A Horse Is: Views On Education in the 19th Century
Schools are scenes of extreme manipulation and coercion. Our national and state interest in them is less than benign, or as the soft-hearted among us might say, less than caring. Let us, residents of our…
Pea Soup and Poetry
A poem, for me, is often very clearly a response to what I am reading and the way it fits into my material existence. The poem in other words is both a reflection on literature…
My Favorite Book
On a job application for a teaching position one is asked to write a one-page essay on “my favorite book.” Here’s what I’ve got. Thoughts? Do you have a favorite? If so, can you let…
Circus Freaks by Design
Not long ago, one our most compromised academics (by that I mean paid shill), Jay P. Greene, posted to his blog an abstract to a journal article about “fellatio narratives” in order to point out…
The Railroad Rides Upon Us: On the Pursuit of Uneventfulness
We embody a type of greatness. We are of capacity. We are of potential. And yet we are nearly entirely imbecilic in body and mind. Of what, on what, in what do we spend our…