“Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats [w/ Audio]

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I

That is no country for old men. The young
 In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
 -- Those dying generations - at their song,
 The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
 Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
 Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
   Caught in that sensual music all neglect
   Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
 A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
 Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
 For every tatter in its mortal dress,
 Nor is there singing school but studying
 Monuments of its own magnificence;
   And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
   To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
 As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
 Come from the holy fire, perne a gyre,
 And be the singing-masters of my soul.
 Consume my heart away; sick with desire
 And fastened to a dying animal
   It knows not what it is; and gather me
   Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
 My bodily form from any natural thing,
 But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
 Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
 To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
 Or set upon a golden bough to sing
   To lords and ladies of Byzantium
   Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

BOOKS: “Eternals” (2006) by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr.

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EternalsEternals by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

The Eternals is one of the lesser-known superhero groups, a collection of immortal, god-tier heroes who protect the Earth from a specific set of enemies (Deviants) and serve a specific master (Celestials.) [The Eternals are a little better known now, given Marvel’s “every hero, everywhere, all at once” strategy led them to make a movie based on the team, and — like many products of that phase — it was not loved.] I am usually not a big fan of god-powered comic book characters because it’s an uphill battle to make them interesting. However, I am a big fan of the story-crafting of Neil Gaiman, and this story had the promise of the heroes not knowing they were heroes, at least through the early part of the book.

I found the story to be coherent, despite its outlandishness, and I was a fan of having the heroes living under the impression they are ordinary people. I think that device created fine conditions for tension and intrigue. Still, the volume does not read with the visceral intensity one would expect of a story with stakes as high as they are stated to be. There was some distance created by a lack of intense connection to the characters and the clunkiness of the premise.

If you’re looking for stories of a hero team stranger than the Avengers, but not as strange as Guardians of the Galaxy, this may be your cup of tea.

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DAILY PHOTO: Approaching Annapurna Basecamp

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1

Cold Mountain [Haiku]

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cold mountain:
 sound of falling water
  iced to silence.

PROMPT: One Positive Change

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Daily writing prompt
Describe one positive change you have made in your life.
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After transitioning from tighty-whities, through boxers, and on to the boxer-brief, I think I have finally found the path to downstairs bliss.

“Refined” [Poetry Style #6] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]

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Buying fine jade in the springtime,
 Enjoying rain song from within a cabin,
 A taciturn scholar sits betwixt
 Copses of tall, arching bamboo.
Sparse white clouds in a newly clear sky;
 Swallows weave 'round trees in pursuit.
Light through leaf casts a green hue on all;
 Sound of falling water, thin but near;
 Flower petals fall without a sound.
But the man sits unyielding as a mum;
 He writes what the scene dictates
   To make a pithy book.

NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a translation of the sixth of the twenty-four poems.

Fade to Black [Haiku]

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the coral-hued lake
 will soon be the inky void
  between coastal lights.

BOOK: “The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded” by Dana Sawyer

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The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded: A Guide for the Mystically-inclinedThe Perennial Philosophy Reloaded: A Guide for the Mystically-inclined by Dana Sawyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Release Date: July 9, 2024

The good news is that this book does a thorough, clear, and balanced job of discussing Perennial Philosophy along a number of dimensions including metaphysics, psychology, theology, and aesthetics. The bad news is that it can lead one to believe there IS NO Perennial Philosophy, just a hodge-podge of (often disparate) assumptions about the grand metaphysical questions of life, the universe, and everything, assumptions that are usually Eastern, mystical, or both and which appeal to the kind of person who likes to say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” but which are all over the place, intellectually speaking. We learn more about the varied metaphysical perspectives that can be lumped under rubric Perennial Philosophy, than we learn of any internally consistent set of beliefs which distinguish the Philosophy from others. Sawyer does acknowledge that there is not a unified worldview that is Perennial Philosophy and that, instead, one must think in terms of “family resemblance.” The problem is that Perennial Philosophy displays the kind of family resemblance seen in a foster home. One can believe in a god or not, believe in a soul / persistent self or not, one can hold any number of beliefs about time, causation, creation, and other aspects of metaphysics. Sawyer does solidly distinguish Perennial Philosophy from Materialism, but it’s not clear why we needed it, given we already had various permutations of Idealism.

The book does provide a lot of food-for-thought, if often frustratingly so. The most important thing it does is lay out the various questions at the fore of Perennial Philosophy, how they’ve been addressed by different thinkers, and the crux of discord.

I did find myself disturbed by the arguments on occasion. A prime example is when Sawyer writes about students who describe themselves as non-spiritual but who enjoy going hiking. Because Sawyer couches the experiences that are had on a good hike in spiritual terms, he believes the students are wrong to describe themselves as “non-spiritual.” However, it’s far from clear why they need to twist their interpretations into line with his worldview. I suspect that his “non-spiritual” students, like me, see in “spiritual” types a need to escape the surly bonds of nature, to have magic exist in their worlds, something above and beyond nature. I see “spiritual” people as having a craving like the proverbial true-believer / flood victim whose neighbors come by in a truck and a boat to rescue him (and then rescue services come by with a helicopter,) but he turns them all down because “God Will Save Me!” Then he dies and goes to heaven and berates God for letting him drown, to which God says, “I sent a truck, a boat, and a helicopter. What do you want from me?” Well, he wanted a divine golden light to levitate him not some mundane solution based in the natural world; he wanted magic, rapturous rescue.

If you are interested in the various debates between Materialism and Idealism, this book is well worth reading, and if you describe yourself as “Spiritual, but not religious,” you’ll probably really love it.

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DAILY PHOTO: Chobe River Scenes

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Summer Sunset [Senryū]

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harsh summer sun sets:
 baboon troops exit the woods,
  "Yeah, you'd better run!"