I just want to be filled with space
After so much cramped air bursting with light
I just want silence after sharing
A room with snoring family
I just want patience
For dirty pictures and slot machines
I just want peace.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Home
It's that time of year again, that time when Colorado calls me back one more time. I feel like the ghost of Christmas present, only here for the season and no longer. I look forward to this time all year, only to realize that I am filled with melancholy and heartache of seasons past whilst I'm here.
My friends have grown, some old, some young, and others just grown. Ryan is in love, Nate is wandering still, and the rest exist somewhere at the fringes of my social sight, almost over the horizon, mere shadows to my vision.
Katherine is gone from this place, her ghost no longer walks with me. There is goodness in this and there is the barest pang of something lost. No great thing, nor small thing; this news is just news, as cold and half-noticed as the trees in my front yard. The time between her and I is too far stretched for my heart to find meaning in her passing. I was not sure until today that the hole had healed; my heart has forgotten the which turns to take to reach her home.
Tonight, Orion hangs high overhead. In my memories, he is the guardian of this place, an ever present spirit who witnessed all the sour and saporous things which came to pass.
The night is a blue curtain and I wonder if only I could draw it back what I would see.
My friends have grown, some old, some young, and others just grown. Ryan is in love, Nate is wandering still, and the rest exist somewhere at the fringes of my social sight, almost over the horizon, mere shadows to my vision.
Katherine is gone from this place, her ghost no longer walks with me. There is goodness in this and there is the barest pang of something lost. No great thing, nor small thing; this news is just news, as cold and half-noticed as the trees in my front yard. The time between her and I is too far stretched for my heart to find meaning in her passing. I was not sure until today that the hole had healed; my heart has forgotten the which turns to take to reach her home.
Tonight, Orion hangs high overhead. In my memories, he is the guardian of this place, an ever present spirit who witnessed all the sour and saporous things which came to pass.
The night is a blue curtain and I wonder if only I could draw it back what I would see.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
In Defense of the Radical Skeptic
They're right, you know, the radical skeptics and sometimes we envy them that. They fail to see the reason in our confidence, refuse to play the game of axioms, and shame us when we cannot provide justifications for our knowledge.
They're right, you know. They know that they cannot act, cannot think, cannot reason unless they join us more slipshod folk, but they will not back down from the truth: we don't know anything for sure, not even that we do not know. For this I praise the radical skeptic for their bravery. They are the great philosophical nobles, their spirits bent forever straight in the face of a truth that the rest of us fear, that we know nothing at all.
No, the of the radical skeptic is not flawed in their rationality, but their unwillingness to say what we cannot reasonably speak does trouble us lesser thinkers. We mumble to them things like practicality and hearts and souls and what dandelions would dream, if they could dream. We sometimes-skeptics (for we are never completely assured of our beliefs) are caught sometimes by these skeptics staring across fields dappled by summer time sunsets, sucking the sting out of frozen fingers, and drinking warm tea, wondering if there is not some greater purpose to this all, if our inability to speak is perhaps the whole point.
So it seems to us, the radical skeptic isn't at all wrong, they just are missing all the fun. Our messy worlds don't fit into the crossword boxes and our minds are less troubled by our ineptitudes than they seem to be. So, we will sit with these skeptics, puzzled by their fervor, but delighted by their passion for truth, for in their presence, they are the experts and we the bumbling amateurs who've never yet bothered to learn the rules of good thinking.
They're right, you know. They know that they cannot act, cannot think, cannot reason unless they join us more slipshod folk, but they will not back down from the truth: we don't know anything for sure, not even that we do not know. For this I praise the radical skeptic for their bravery. They are the great philosophical nobles, their spirits bent forever straight in the face of a truth that the rest of us fear, that we know nothing at all.
No, the of the radical skeptic is not flawed in their rationality, but their unwillingness to say what we cannot reasonably speak does trouble us lesser thinkers. We mumble to them things like practicality and hearts and souls and what dandelions would dream, if they could dream. We sometimes-skeptics (for we are never completely assured of our beliefs) are caught sometimes by these skeptics staring across fields dappled by summer time sunsets, sucking the sting out of frozen fingers, and drinking warm tea, wondering if there is not some greater purpose to this all, if our inability to speak is perhaps the whole point.
So it seems to us, the radical skeptic isn't at all wrong, they just are missing all the fun. Our messy worlds don't fit into the crossword boxes and our minds are less troubled by our ineptitudes than they seem to be. So, we will sit with these skeptics, puzzled by their fervor, but delighted by their passion for truth, for in their presence, they are the experts and we the bumbling amateurs who've never yet bothered to learn the rules of good thinking.
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