Monthly Archives: December 2022

Morlock Memories [Free Verse]

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I woke up rife 
with Morlock memories.

What a damnable time it was!

The days when I 
was not a boy,
and not a man --
nothing for which anyone
had a good word.

Maybe I was a shadow:
two-dimensional 
&
wonky in shape.

I was that which 
lived below:
below ground,
below the radar,
below comprehension.

Last Blossom [Blank Verse]

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The final flower falls to the sidewalk.
It's damp and deformed, -n- sugared with sand.
It's gritty and pretty at the same time.

The ants are crawling around and across.
A faintly putrid scent must call to them.
They crave that little bit of death in food.

And tomorrow it'll be gone -- somehow -- gone.
Who knows where: swept up, carried, or wind-blown.
It will be gone, and branches will be bare.

Nashville Limerick

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There was a great guitarist from Nashville
who couldn't remember to pay his tax bill.
They seized his Les Paul
and even his stress ball.
He became that stressed-out uke player of Asheville.

DAILY PHOTO: Szilágyi Dezső Square Reformed Church

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BOOK REVIEW: Zeno and the Tortoise by Nicholas Fearn

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Zeno and the Tortoise: How to Think Like a PhilosopherZeno and the Tortoise: How to Think Like a Philosopher by Nicholas Fearn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This book presents twenty-five philosophical tools or concepts fundamental to thinking philosophically. Fearn does an excellent job of making these ideas comprehensible while exploring how they can be of practical value in philosophizing (as opposed to diving into conceptual minutiae and the conflicts and debates around them.) The author uses stories, metaphors, and examples extensively, while avoiding jargon or complicated expressions and explanations.

The book is entirely Western-oriented, and one won’t see any discussion of ideas originating outside Europe (or North America by way of immigration from Europe.) That’s not uncommon for English language popular philosophy books, and I don’t think there’s anything nefarious to be read into it, though some will find it a shame. The philosophers whose ideas are addressed span from pre-Socratic Greece to Richard Dawkins (who I’m pretty sure is the only one still living.) The reader learns about reductionism, relativism, the Socratic method, analogy / allegory, teleology, thought experiments, parsimony, pragmatism (of sorts,) induction, skepticism, social contract, utilitarianism, dialectics, falsifiability, memes, deconstruction, and more.

I found this book to be readable and absorbing and would highly recommend it for anyone who would like an overview of the major ideas of Western philosophy and how they can be applied to thinking more philosophically.


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BOOK REVIEW: The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction by Nick Groom

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The Gothic: A Very Short IntroductionThe Gothic: A Very Short Introduction by Nick Groom
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Gothicness is the perfect kind of subject for the VSI series because it’s one of those areas about which everybody knows something, and yet knows nothing, really. Goth is [or has been] a people (or some people’s perception of other people,) an architectural style, a literary / cinematic genre, a contemporary lifestyle, and a political motif. Because of this diversity, even people who have a degree of expertise on some aspect of gothicness may have little understanding of other aspects or how these varied forms of gothicness relate (if they do, and – if they don’t — why enough people believe they relate to have made this well-formed, consensus view of connectedness.)

The downside of this diversity is that this book will almost certainly be dry, verging on tedious, at some point in the reading, depending upon one’s interests. For example, I found the portions on Gothic literature and cinema to be fascinating, but the part that dealt with gothicness in Whig politics to be boring. [With the architecture bit somewhere in between.] That said, one needs to follow this throughline to see how so many varied domains came to be Goth. Also, the book is quite short, so one isn’t likely to be bored to death because there’s not enough space spent on any one topic for that to happen.

I learned a lot about what it means to be “Goth” [or “goth”] from reading this book. It covers the history in some detail, but also brings it around to present-day movies and art. If you seek to know more about what “Gothic” means, you should definitely look into this brief guide.

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Cambridge U. Limerick

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When Lord Byron lived at Cambridge University,
he greatly increased campus diversity.
He lived with a bear.
They were quite the pair.
For the poet, the dog ban was a perversity.

DAILY PHOTO: Flowers & Hills, Makalidurga

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BOOK REVIEW: Singing and Dancing Are the Voice of the Law by Busshō Lahn

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Singing and Dancing Are the Voice of the Law: A Commentary on Hakuin's “Song of Zazen”Singing and Dancing Are the Voice of the Law: A Commentary on Hakuin’s “Song of Zazen” by Bussho Lahn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Release Date: December 20, 2022 [In India, may be out in your area.]

This book consists of a collection of essays inspired by the poem, “Song of Zazen,” written by the 18th century Zen master, Hakuin. Hakuin’s poem is brief (about forty lines,) and the essays composed by a present-day Zen priest (Lahn) offer commentary on a stanza-by-stanza basis. The book is divided into fourteen chapters, though the final chapter isn’t a stanza commentary.

I enjoyed reading this book and learned a great deal from it. The book benefits from the fact that the author is not rigidly sectarian. Therefore, the book is not doctrinaire, which warms the reader to the teachings. It’s also useful because it allowed the author to freely draw examples and quotes from a variety of sources, some of which may be more familiar or relatable to neophyte readers.

The last chapter offers a discussion of the fundamentals of zazen (seated meditation) as well as some other ancillary information that may be useful to readers new to Zen Buddhism, its practices, and its sutras. If you’re interested in Zen Buddhist meditation and philosophy, you may want to give it a look.


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