Category: Philosophy

Posted on

In Praise Of Love With Roberta Flack, Heraclitus, Apuleius, Pseudo-Dionysus The Areopagite, Jalaluddin Rumi, Johnny Cash, Rabia Basri, Allan Bloom, Bob Dylan, Scarlett Rivera And A Cup Of Instant Coffee Before I Go To The Valley Below.

A love song can devastate, render us a pool of ache and tears.  A love song may speak to our love in this world, and our desire to claim love beyond physical and temporal bounds.  A love may hunger for the divine.  I first heard “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in the … Continue reading In Praise Of Love With Roberta Flack, Heraclitus, Apuleius, Pseudo-Dionysus The Areopagite, Jalaluddin Rumi, Johnny Cash, Rabia Basri, Allan Bloom, Bob Dylan, Scarlett Rivera And A Cup Of Instant Coffee Before I Go To The Valley Below.

Posted on

More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

Last I left Love, I considered Nick Cave’s dark turnings of the lover’s call, playing off of Dante’s first sonnet of beatific and cannibalistic vision.  Yet, Dante a few sonnets on in Vita Nuova, also broods on the havoc Love causes, so one might say with Marc Antony in Shake the Spear’s Julius Caesar, “Cry … Continue reading More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

Posted on

Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

My devotion to offal, especially heart, has appeared frequently throughout this blog.  Recipes for this great, bloody muscle resurrect my body and spirit, piercing my tongue and thoughts with recipes revealing its divine aroma and taste.  I have worshipped lamb hearts.   I have worshipped smoked reindeer heart. I have smoked a heart myself. I have … Continue reading Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

Posted on

A Bog In Saint Clair Shores Surrounds White Castle, While Danger Doom Stirs The Pot.

Time to cook for the family, which means sledging the bog, digging the swamp, pouring the fat. Off to Eastern Market to gather onions, carrots, parsnips, garlic, mushrooms, potatoes, herbs, and oxtails and short ribs. Yes, oxtails and short ribs. Produce from local Michigan farmers gleams aisle after aisle. All that grows in the dark … Continue reading A Bog In Saint Clair Shores Surrounds White Castle, While Danger Doom Stirs The Pot.

Posted on

“White Castles” As My Son And I Watch “Rick And Morty,” While Space And Time Bubbles And Wobbles Away

Always there waiting when I arrive, though not always visited, not always directly acknowledged and approached like an itinerant believer noticing the grail, but in the end deferring.  Talked of often, gestured toward, but sometimes the car continues, the night passes.  But not tonight.  No, as I raise a glass of Michigan whiskey raised with … Continue reading “White Castles” As My Son And I Watch “Rick And Morty,” While Space And Time Bubbles And Wobbles Away

Posted on

Traveling Through Winter Dark and Light With Samuel Beckett And Assorted Food Options.

Hours from now I’ll look at my aisle window and believe it’s Venice instead of Stockholm, eighteen-hundred and forty-six instead of two thousand and nineteen, and I’m navigating channels on a gondola in the “City of Water” on my way to a ball in ‘Going to the Ball (San Martino)’.  Also, my name is Joseph … Continue reading Traveling Through Winter Dark and Light With Samuel Beckett And Assorted Food Options.

Posted on

Goodbye To Two Thousand And Eighteen With Three Single Malt Scotch Bottles From The Southern Coast Of Islay As The Sky Burns Over Nacka And I Listen To Vic Chesnutt And Elf Power.

The sunset burns the sky.  Such mysteries occur all the time.  I might think the world’s on fire, a revealing and ending through flames silhouetting branches, trunks and needles; but no, sadly apocalypse will have to wait for another year.  Still, world-altering changes have taken place, at least for the family.  I moved with Gabriela … Continue reading Goodbye To Two Thousand And Eighteen With Three Single Malt Scotch Bottles From The Southern Coast Of Islay As The Sky Burns Over Nacka And I Listen To Vic Chesnutt And Elf Power.

Posted on

Vinter Och Glögg Or Post-Impressionistic Impressions of Ice-Jacketed Branches And Sideboards Or What Happens in Sweden On Christmas Eve.

Winter is here. Frozen, snow-covered branches and needles fill windows round the house.  Winter as my eyes, memory and all those ice-covered roads masquerading as neural networks fashion winter.  Cold on the outside?  Well, then drink a glass of glögg, mulled wine heavy on the allspice, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and on and on. After a … Continue reading Vinter Och Glögg Or Post-Impressionistic Impressions of Ice-Jacketed Branches And Sideboards Or What Happens in Sweden On Christmas Eve.

Posted on

Cooking the Bog. Day Two With Rust Cohle And Bosnian Rainbows. Darkness In The Wetlands.

Outside the winter wetlands of Sweden continue to breakdown animal and vegetal matter into a rich loam feeding tree, deer, duck and wandering humans.  Inside, I continue to enhance the decay of the world in a pot. A crucial step in the final bog, that rich gumbo broth, occurs with the making of a roux, … Continue reading Cooking the Bog. Day Two With Rust Cohle And Bosnian Rainbows. Darkness In The Wetlands.

Posted on

A Walk Through Leaves Then Snow Then Vinglögg Or Seventeen Ways Of Looking At The Svecofennian Orogeny.

Trees branch across land, sea and sky here in the northern fall as you walk leaves floating in front of your face and those already at your feet; all that crumples, all that pushes upward. Lakes rustle in northern light trying to stretch and warp; roots and trunks bending like a bow. Indefinite set theories … Continue reading A Walk Through Leaves Then Snow Then Vinglögg Or Seventeen Ways Of Looking At The Svecofennian Orogeny.