Ares' Swan Song

On Marcusian regression towards the mean.

Sappho's Radiance

Her Cup Runneth Over
All alone a sweet apple reddens on the topmost branch,
high on the highest branch, the apple pickers did not notice it,
they did not truly forget it, but they could not reach it.
--Sappho of Lesbos

Fomenting Discontent via Critical Theory

The Key to Developing a Counter-Cultural Revolutionary Consciousness
...thereby explaining the formerly inexplicably over-represented bastions of Neo-Marxian Critical Theory practitioners to be found in the New Left dominated Post-Modern Academy.

A Moment of Faux Intimacy w/ Amanda Palmer

Celebrities often seek to create an aura of intimacy for their fans. But just because you Tweet and I Twitter, THAT doesn't make us "intimate".

Is Intimacy More than Trading...

Can we Talk?

ala- Joan Rivers

Painting with the Sands of Time

Ixion's Wheel, as experienced from a vantage point outside Tartarus

The Difficulties of a Love Unlimited?

What rustic girl bewitches thee,
Who cannot even draw
Her garments neat as they should be,
Her ankles roundabout? --Sappho of Lesbos

And the tragedies of love's "limited". Defining for Pan-dora a "container/box"... complete with "defining limit" for the "all-good/gold" of "love"... for as Isaiah Berlin stated, there was an "unavoidability of conflicting ends" or, alternatively, "incommensurability" of values. He once called this "the only truth which I have ever found out for myself... Some of the Great Goods cannot live together.... We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss." In short, it's what Michael Ignatieff summarized as "the tragic nature of choice".

So what should we choose to form the limits of our love so that we avoid Pandora's mistake of unleashing all the evils in the world in the vain hope that nothing bad will happen as a result? You can't love EVERYTHING (all at the same time), can you? ;)

Thanks for all the Fish!

Repeating Holiday Rituals

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Y'all!

Virtuosity

Taking Time to Smell the Roses

Sappho of Lesbos (fragment 68)

In the cold grave where thou shalt lie
All memory too of thee shall die,
Who in this life's auspicious hours
Disdained Pieria's genial flowers;
And in the mansions of the dead,
With the vile crowd of ghosts, thy shade,
While nobler spirits point with scorn,
Shall flit neglected and forlorn.
---
Aspirations for immortal pursuits and other exhortations from the dreams of mere mortals... Charaxos, heed your sister's prayers and admonitions and repent by following her example...

Kypris and you Nereids, grant
that my brother arrive here unharmed
and that everything his heart wishes
be perfectly achieved;

grant too that he atone for all his past errors
and that he prove a source of joy to his friends
and sorrow to his enemies; and to us may no one
ever again bring trouble.

May he be willing to give his sister
her share of honor, and grievous sorrow . . .
. . . formerly in distress . . .
--Sappho of Lesbos

Lotus Flowers on the Banks of Archeron

Musical Variant, et al. (On the nature of a lotus flower)

Please...

Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.

Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech

Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see...
--Sappho of Lesbos

Sudden Wisdom

Feelin' Lucky?

Freud Abstracts on "Civilization and Its Discontents"

The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer. Men strive after happiness. This endeavor has two sides: it aims at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. One of the methods of averting suffering is the chemical one, intoxication. Another technique is the employment of displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. In another procedure, satisfaction is obtained from illusions, which are recognized as such without the discrepancy between them and reality being allowed to interfere with enjoyment. Another procedure regards reality as the sole enemy and as the source of all suffering, with which it is impossible to live, so that one must break off all relations with it if one is to be happy in any way. Happiness in life can be predominantly sought in the enjoyment of beauty. The man who is predominantly erotic will give first preference to his emotional relationships to other people; the narcissistic man, who inclines to be self-sufficient, will seek his main satisfactions in his internal mental processes; the man of action will never give up the external world on which he can try out his strength. Religion restricts the play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection from suffering.

Where, in a Control Society, does one go to...

...so who was supposed to be in control of the vortex today, again? I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box, but granting and or divining for the vortex a "will" and a deliberate "intention" seems a bit beyond my, and everyone else's, ken.

Telemachus' Father's Eucharis

"Progressive" Siren Songs of Surrender

Critical Theory - What currently exists is bad and corrupt. Never mind about what is to come. Concentrate only on the ills of the past...

Idylls on a Perfect Marriage

On Fame and the Sacrifice of a Shared Destiny

...said the Lady of Shalott to Lancelot

...as relayed by one Don Quixote to the honourable knight.

The Lady Half-sick

The Lady looking at Lancelot

The Lady's journey

......................................~(&:>

Only the Good Die Young

The White Queen's Lament

Paean to Penelope

The Sum of Their Parts

...and other Surplus Values

Countdown to Futterwacken

Two Years 'til Fabjous Day...

3 - 2 - 1 - Ignition!

The Ninth Voice

Plato, "Cratylus"

SOCRATES: My dear Hermogenes, the first imposers of names must surely have been considerable persons; they were philosophers, and had a good deal to say.

HERMOGENES: Well, and what of them?

SOCRATES: They are the men to whom I should attribute the imposition of names. Even in foreign names, if you analyze them, a meaning is still discernible. For example, that which we term ousia is by some called esia, and by others again osia. Now that the essence of things should be called estia, which is akin to the first of these (esia = estia), is rational enough. And there is reason in the Athenians calling that estia which participates in ousia. For in ancient times we too seem to have said esia for ousia, and this you may note to have been the idea of those who appointed that sacrifices should be first offered to estia, which was natural enough if they meant that estia was the essence of things. Those again who read osia seem to have inclined to the opinion of Heracleitus, that all things flow and nothing stands; with them the pushing principle (othoun) is the cause and ruling power of all things, and is therefore rightly called osia. Enough of this, which is all that we who know nothing can affirm. Next in order after Hestia we ought to consider Rhea and Cronos, although the name of Cronos has been already discussed. But I dare say that I am talking great nonsense.

HERMOGENES: Why, Socrates?

SOCRATES: My good friend, I have discovered a hive of wisdom.

HERMOGENES: Of what nature?

SOCRATES: Well, rather ridiculous, and yet plausible.

The "Individual" Greek Mind The "Collective" Greek Mind

On the Language of the Lyre

Is the Epic a Remedy for the Lyric?