We really don’t have a clue why among all the ethnies that wandered through Europe in late antiquity and early middle ages, the Jews, and later Gypsies, were the only ones that didn’t develop a self-defense concept. However it was a pretty dangerous world and they had to be aware of it and in those times there were plenty of mountains and forests that could serve as natural shelters and fortresses. Like the Moorish soldiers defeated by Charlemagne who found their niche in the Alps (today’s Valais), like the Druze … Read More
Author: vbpadmin
Do Humans Change?
I had a debate with a friend who holds the politically correct opinion that humans evolve toward universal harmony as can be seen in world metropolises. Only a few “primitives” like those in the Balkans don’t understand this yet, and through persuasion, or force if necessary, everybody should be brought toward the ideal human condition of coexistence.
Since the most remote times leaders have tried to impose their ideals of perfection on societies at large and all they have achieved in the best of cases was truce not peace. Even … Read More
Hidden Beauty
Old Polish Shepherd’s Song
O Vistula, deep blue river beside forest
beside forest
And I have a bunch of pipes at my belt
At my belt
I will pick a little pipe, we’ll play
We’ll play
My sheep will hear me, it’s time to go
It’s time to go.
At all threshholds of human existence there is a place for ethos and pathos — places of hidden beauty. WM
#136 July-August 2013
Ergo Sum
A 19th Century French poet advised: “Let yourself be sustained by your principles — until they start to wobble.” Just for the fun of it, I’d like to shake them right off the bat.
“I think, therefore I am” is accepted as a universal truth but I disagree and propose instead: “I feel, therefore I am.” Perhaps I am not the first to claim it, as it seems pretty obvious. So, sorry for “rediscovering America.”
I know, thanks to the mind, that 2 + 2 = 4, and everybody else … Read More
The Kiss
Midsummer Night’s Dream — The Kiss 3×4′ ~WM~
“If nobody needs us, we don’t need ourselves”
Extracts of Existence
You May Be Right, But …
Each time you encounter in an argument the “but”, transcending reason, it’s usual stronger than the reason. It refuses dialog proper to reason, it transcends your sense of values. ‘But’ is Zen, it doesn’t impose a solution, it only declares: “I don’t know why, I only know that your solution is unacceptable.” It’s in the twilight zone of intuition that the difference between us and the intelligent machine manifests itself. ‘But’ is quantic, indefinable. It will never be at the service of one idea because an ultimate solution doesn’t exist; … Read More
From the balcony at night …
From the balcony at night, I saw the neighbours through their lighted windows. The high-rise buildings looked like giant aquariums in which people, like fish, moved with mysterious aims, meaningful only for them. All movements are magic and hypnotic when we sum them up and take away their individual sense; fish in an aquarium, people in their habitats, rotation of the planets … all become unified, static, eternal; Buddhism and relativity in a common embrace.
Extracts of Existence
Passing instants …
Blossoms in the Snow
The desperation of passing instants
The spirits go away . . .
Above: clouds are passing
Below: people pass like ghosts.
When the humans go away, when the ghosts go away, why is it such a parade of sorrow? Perhaps because passing introduces the past to the present and to the inflexible future, as youth introduces old age and old age introduces death.
With ghosts you will not straighten your accounts.
Extracts of Existence
Change …
~ Condition does not change essence, the ship aground will not root to become a tree.
~ There is no such thing as change; some part goes and another comes in its place. The human is like a tree — the leaves come and go and don’t know about each other
~ The problem is physical if you can change it and philosophical if you must change yourself.
Extracts of Existence
.Dance of Eros — Dance of Thanatos
In my archives, I happened to fall upon a postcard reproduction of Blair Drawson’s, “Dance of the Free Spirits.” To this artwork which I enjoyed, I added my translation of the last lines of “The Dancing Socrates” by the Polish poet, Julian Tuvim:
“Let them know that the madman in trance
The clown with the ugly snout of a dog
Learn the truth, learn the dance
Hopsa, hopsa, hop, hop, hop”
Now the reverse of Eros, the dance of Thanatos:
A couple of Holocaust survivors talked to me. The husband … Read More