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our real work Our real work Wendell Berry, 1983 It may be that when we no longer know what to do We have come to our real work, And that when we no longer know which way to go We have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. the following is all about reading “If you think about it, the very best books are really just extremely long spells that turn you into a different person for the rest of your life.” ...

The New Song by W. S. Merwin For some time I thought there was time and that there would always be time for what I had a mind to do and what I could imagine going back to and finding it as I had found it the first time but by this time I do not know what I thought when I thought back then there is no time yet it grows less there is the sound of rain at night arriving unknown in the leaves once without before or after then I hear the thrush waking at daybreak singing the new song

Start to read the blog of Robert Paul wolff. Start to watch his lectures on Kant. video blog part 1 Reading the Critique Part I part 2 reading the Critique Part II part 3 reading the Critique Part III part 4 reading the Critique part IV part 5 reading the Critique part V part 6 reading the Critique part VI part 7 reading the Critique part VII part 8 reading the critique part VIII part 9 reading the Critique part IX From the wiki page: Kant builds on the work of empiricist philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume, as well as rationalist philosophers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff. He expounds new ideas on the nature of space and time, and tries to provide solutions to the skepticism of Hume regarding knowledge of the relation of cause and effect and that of René Descartes regarding knowledge of the external world. This is argued through the transcendental idealism of objects (as appearance) and their form of appearance. Kant regards the former “as mere representations and not as things in themselves”, and the latter as “only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves”. This grants the possibility of a priori knowledge, since objects as appearance “must conform to our cognition…which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us.” Knowledge independent of experience Kant calls “a priori” knowledge, while knowledge obtained through experience is termed “a posteriori”.[2] According to Kant, a proposition is a priori if it is necessary and universal. A proposition is necessary if it is not false in any case and so cannot be rejected; rejection is contradiction. A proposition is universal if it is true in all cases, and so does not admit of any exceptions. Knowledge gained a posteriori through the senses, Kant argues, never imparts absolute necessity and universality, because it is possible that we might encounter an exception. ...

As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love. Words and eggs must be handled with care. Once broken they are impossible things to repair.

Came across several quotes from Henry Ford: Money doesn’t change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out. Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service. The best way to make money is to stop thinking about making money and start thinking about serving people. ...

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n. John Milton (1608-1674), Paradise Lost In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius. — Thomas Mann ...

Separation W.S.Merwin Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle Everything i do is stitched with its color Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet. -- Bob Marley

For Jessica, My Daughter Mark Strand (1934-2014) Tonight I walked, lost in my own meditation, and was afraid, not of the labyrinth that I have made of love and self but of the dark and faraway. I walked, hearing the wind in the trees, feeling the cold against my skin, but what I dwelled on were the stars blazing in the immense arc of sky. Jessica, it is so much easier to think of our lives, as we move under the brief luster of leaves, loving what we have, than to think of how it is such small beings as we travel in the dark with no visible way or end in sight. Yet there were times I remember under the same sky when the body's bones became light and the wound of the skull opened to receive the cold rays of the cosmos, and were, for an instant, themselves the cosmos, there were times when I could believe we were the children of stars and our words were made of the same dust that flames in space, times when I could feel in the lightness of breath the weight of a whole day come to rest. But tonight it is different. Afraid of the dark in which we drift or vanish altogether, I imagine a light that would not let us stray too far apart, a secret moon or mirror, a sheet of paper, something you could carry in the dark when I am away.

John O’Donohue Fluent I would love to live Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare, The Tempest Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. J.R.R.Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937. But imprint this on your mind: tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain ...