Culture – Page 11 – Writer Between Worlds

The Sacred and the Profane

“Just as a modern man’s habitation has lost its cosmological values, so too his body is without religious or spiritual significance. In a summary formula we might say that for the nonreligious men of the modern age, the cosmos has become opaque, inert, mute; it transmits no message, it holds no cipher. The feeling of…
Read more: The Sacred and the Profane
Quotes of the Day

“When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny. (…) There is danger there – a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all…
Read more: Quotes of the Day
Winter

So the snow comes down from the sky through an invisible sieve hissing. All birds have gone – the muzzled silence the night’s only sound. Homes sleeping. Frayed blankets of white alight from radiant indigo clouds; solitude bites into them and they are unraveled.
Read more: Winter
Arrival: The Gift of Language (A Film Review)

Is time really linear and sequential like our writing? Or could it be, for a more advanced awareness, circular: a spherical sum of simultaneities? When past and future become perceptible and intertwined, is the present any more tangible than the emotion of a flashback or the knowledge of a glimpse forward? Is a vision, a…
Read more: Arrival: The Gift of Language (A Film Review)
24 hours in Verona – November

Read more: 24 hours in Verona – November
O carte

lumina slabă a unui felinar picură coniac pe o mână de frunze lucioase în rest, doar glasul răguşit şi distant al unui radiou străbate bezna bezna asta groasă şi caldă ca o plăcintă apetisantă cu cremă, sâmburele de dinăuntrul pralinei e rotund şi tare mi se rostogoleşte în gură, în jurul limbii, ca odinioară săruturile…
Read more: O carte
Revisiting the Stoics

Well, you know what they say, some things never change. Anxious, dissatisfied, relationship not going well? So what else is new? I’ve recently come across the following, from Epictetus: “There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.” (…) “Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion,…
Read more: Revisiting the Stoics
Walk, sadness, walk!

I took my sadness for a walk. I walked it right out of the park, past the tram stops and onto the streets flooded with the slow, hesitant steps of old age. I walked and walked and walked it out of my body. Then I walked some more with it like one walks with…
Read more: Walk, sadness, walk!
Ancient words of counsel?

“It may be said that every individual man and all men in common aim at a certain end which determines what they choose and what they avoid. This end, to sum it up briefly, is HAPPINESS AND ITS CONSTITUENTS. (…) We may define happiness as prosperity combined with virtue; or as independence of life; or…
Read more: Ancient words of counsel?
Path through my childhood

I walked the winding path today around the apartment buildings right through my childhood. Everything smelled the same. The big white lilies gave off a fragrance of early evening, the sunset was in its incipient stages. The heat bearable, like me. Summer petering out. I leapt from one slab of stone to…
Read more: Path through my childhood
My feline challenge

The lascivious cat in the dimly lit window, first floor, across the small garden. Its stare nonchalant, immovable, intent, drills into me all the important questions about who and why and what am I going to do about everything. I have a very distinct feeling the cat and I have been facing off on…
Read more: My feline challenge
Home

I walked the winding path today around the apartment buildings right through my childhood. Everything smelled the same. The big white lilies gave off a fragrance of early evening, the sunset was in its incipient stages. The heat bearable, like me. Summer petering out. I leapt from one slab of stone to…
Read more: Home

Category: Culture