January 2010
13 posts
I met Jesus on the way back from the end of the block It is a nice thrift store and I use the other’s stuff.
Age of the Engineer
Why do they persist in such fantasies? It is because they are weak. It is because they are unwilling to live in the real world, in which men are beasts and science reigns. They need ideals, but there are none. There is no God, there is no savior from this condition. There is only death and killing and survival. I do not tell this to you because I love you. I tell this to you because you can help...
“The trouble of the modern age is not merely the inability to believe certain...”
– TS Eliot
Classes move forward at UPenn. The Dietz brothers work and play together. I struggle to put my time in Israel in perspective and to make an assessment regarding what I accomplished there. Hope to do some calligraphy this term. Military matters fade from the mind, a pre-occupation I hope not to have again. In my mind there is something demonic both present and missing.
TS Eliot’s After...
is the end the beginning? if so, should we die together? You, alive, buried, I holding ancestral cup.
Italian journey left in private notebook. Focus on Etruscan origins. I am now at University of Pennsylvania taking classes, struggling with intensive Japanese. More forgotten than remembered; attempting to take solace in Hoelderin. Sanity seems so fragile, thus I cling.
I am at the airport, too early. Sent to the airport interior, where McDonalds for some reason draws me more than the other cafes. I realize just how “American” I am, and am both sad and, in some measure, relieved to be back to our shores from the “last outpost of the Weimar Republic,” as goes one nickname for Hebrew University. No one has figured out how to run the world;...
Tortured by phantasms, in processional strife, walk toward the temple my hand on the knife.
And I would teach them, I would teach all these crawling and venomous creatures what means their Master’s word, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’; I swear by the Sun-God they would render to Caesar what is his!” He raised his head, his eyes flashing with rage and pride and renewed youth… he faltered “No, no; why nurse empty dreams? That...
“What I am learning is nothing but the dregs left by those who lived in the...”
– Kukai, as reported by Shinzei (A. Ryuichi, Weaving of Mantra, P. 73)
Christmas Eve and day were passed in Nazareth, a joyful experience simply to see Christmas decorations and cheer, missing in Jerusalem. Lush landscapes, Kibbutzim, hiking, and Roman ruins in the North. The Christians we stayed with did not attend church, and, though we did, the imam preaching outside in the courtyard neighboring the church was much more powerful, ready to die and to kill.
Back from a brief jaunt into the desert and attempting to tie up loose ends before I return to the US at the beginning of next week — at the moment including attempting to figure out what I think about the ‘violent origins’ of human society and the institution of sacrifice relative to hunting and agricultural societies. I have not found myself gravitating to any of the scholars...
“What almost no prospective graduate students can understand is the extent to...”
– T. Benton, Just Don’t Go, (Part I Part II)