All Stories
Dragging a barn uphill
Clear memory, like nothing else, announces what is important to us. -- Bertrand Russell, "Letters" MEMORY IS A CURIOUS and neglected junkyard. Things get dragged there. They rust or gather...
Measuring time in a search for endings
In theory, one is aware that the Earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it. The ground on which one treads seems not to move, and one can...
October afternoon
The summer fades and passes, and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unsuspected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure. --...
A spider’s star
The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. --Samuel Johnson, "Letters" Sometimes the best teacher teaches only once to...
The art of the epigram
"ANYONE CAN TELL the truth, but only a few can make epigrams." -- W. Somerset Maugham. The making of a good epigram is like the construction of a ship in...
On Walking
The least of things with a meaning is worth more than the greatest of things without one. --C. G. Jung, "Psychological Reflections" EARLY THIS morning the longing for a walk...
The Heart of the Universe Society Science 101; Our frozen winter is only temporary
Cease not to think of the universe as one living Being, possessed of a single substance and a single mind and heart. -- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations" The whole universe together...
Vagaries
:TC What mockeries are firm resolves -- to will is ours, but not to execute. We map our futures like some unknown coast, and say here is a harbor, there...
A circle so wide
TC The huge concentric waves of universal life are shoreless. The starry sky that we study is but partial appearance. We grasp but a few measures of the vast network...
Taking Leave
Going away I can generally bear the separation, but I don't like the leave-taking. * Samuel Butler, "Letters" The life of a teacher is so often a curious affair. We...