Collected Poetry

I love reading poems, and there is so much imagination!

Poetry 

2005

Etherial Robe

The robe of her covers all the nations,

it drapes around all peoples, and covers

them.  Her robe is herself manifested in her creation. 

His robe reaches all corners of the earth.

It is both His punishment and reward.

Punishment to the disloyal and reward to the 

righteous, for each will be measured in his turn.

The robe of the Princess is regal, as it is the robe

of our Queene.  The robe I can imagine as a deep ruby 

red, touching all corners of the earth.

There is nothing that she cannot do; she alone 

has the robe, and every living thing feels its 

influence.  Also, the robe covers every material 

of the earth.   The robe it stands for every living 

and non-living thing on the earth.  Also, the robe 

stands for her creation.  It touches on everything,

encompasses all, and is the wide swath of creation.  See how

pleasantly true her lustrous red robe is and its 

sparkling, unblemished color and how it is ever new and 

self-sustaining.  Oh, the majesty of her who wears the 

robe.  I say all honor to the everlasting robe!

I acknowledge its power and authority.

On Madness

Surely "madness," or a quest in my colloquialisms, in this modern age is the only way out of the modern-day madness. The world is a hospital now, as T. S. Eliot said. We must be mad to escape this hospital. There has to be a rational (what the Greeks and Romans would say is fire or passion) madness to keep one's sanity. If one does not have this rational madness, then woe, great woe to him! I am all alone in the winter on my walks. Why are the people so afraid of the cold?

They want warmth all the time. Life is not all warmth. Life is toil and striving. The people all want to be the same, and civilization is a shadow, the lowest common denominator of life. How much better to face the cold, brave the elements, sensibly wear a coat, and go outside. Life can be warm sometimes and go well at these times. But to think life is uniform is insane. There are good times and bad times. How can there be one without the other?

Rose

The rose finds the time when it wants to bloom.
Hopefully, no beetles will destroy it.
Roses come in many colors: red, pink, yellow, and white among others.
Roses are the princes of the flowers.
They need a lot of watering and upkeep to keep them healthy as humans do.
They are becoming scarce in the modern age, not enough people have them in their yards, which is a shame.
Roses like the sun and the shade; they bloom in the late summer.
Without the sun and shade, where would roses be? There would be none without the sun.

Age

Surely, life is not meant to be wasted.
When I am old, I want to feel that I have taken
every opportunity, always have been productive,
never have wasted a moment. That is why I live in
the "Now." I never want to be idle, I want to often,
"Be on the go." I want to get as much as I can out

of life.  Now I have more wisdom though doing less, which I got

in the natural process of aging.

I think that age just brings wisdom, if we will
only let it. I mean we must not ruin this wisdom
by doing things ill to our health. We must not let
this wisdom come naturally and embrace it
without ruining it through destructive behavior.
We do seem to evolve through the years, though
in another sense we are always the same selves.
It is funny how active we are in childhood, and
our growing healthily and naturally ages us
wonderfully and beautifully, and we revel with joy in life.

The Blue Sky

Today the sky was as deep a blue as
the bluejay. All across the heavens
was a deep blue with no clouds in sight.
One can get lost in a sky so blue.
The blue was bright but not blinding
Everywhere was blue. Below this ocean
of blue, I was walking, and the snow
covered the yards of houses.
A stream of white under an ocean of blue
yet somehow with me walking under this
immense sky. I did not feel small or puny.
The sky was right at home with me. I was
in awe of the sky, but it did not insult me by
making me feel insignificant. Instead it held
out a fiery hand to me, and I shook it in
greeting, and this greeting is an everlasting
friendship coined between us.
This sky must be so pure; it was an unalloyed blue
with no clouds in sight. There was nothing wrong
with sky; it was perfect in its magnificence. The sea
of blue was so serene that it made me serene in turn.
It is also comforting to know that a blanket of
sky covers the atmosphere of this wonderful planet,
which can cover me both when I am outside and
later at night when I think internally and then
come outside myself once again with a quick
glance on a freezing winter night up at the
now black sky with millions of fiery beacons
called stars that compliment the heavens.
This alternation of daytime blue and nighttime
black mirrors so much in nature in the sense
of constant changing. I would not be secure
with the sky being blue day and night, though.
I hear in the poles it is daytime almost the entire
day. So, all credit to the beautiful blue sky
I witnessed on my walk today.

1-800 Numbers (No Operator 0)

These 1-800 numbers. What is their purpose? Why
do they exist? What is the benefit? Call, and some great
result is supposed to happen. You are supposed to get
a great deal. Who knows you were giving away your soul?
You get connected with an impersonal person. This person
does not care about you. He just wants your money, and
you lose your soul in return. You think you are getting
a great deal on a new gutter, for example.
You are made to think this gutter will save your life. So
you call the designated 1-800 number. You get connected
to a person whom you have to talk to. This person is a snake.
They are trained to act nice, all these operators are.  Do not 

call the 1-800 number.  Where did you hear about this 

destructive number?  From the destructive television likely? 

What is more impersonal than the television?
People call for a bit of human contact as well as for the
product. Some call to feel superior to the operator.
Some call for companionship, however small and however
short the time needed for ordering. As for me, I have no
need of the 1-800 number. I am content with my schedule.
What need have I of a new gutter? I feel bad for the operators
at the 1-800 number. They know they have to peddle in things
inimical to the human soul. I mean many of those operators
would rather be bettering their souls instead of being a slave to
the telephone. They are forced against their better instincts, they
are forced to become snakes. This is too bad.
In the wires of the telephone evil souls run through. Evil souls
infect each person calling a stranger on a 1-800 number. It
is so easy to call and not have to face the person. We all know
there is no mystery of a 1-800 number connection. There
will be the customary "Hello." There will be the impersonal
exchanging of credit card numbers and maybe even a little small
talk if it is a big purchase. And if the operator is so inclined, he
or she will say "Thank you." And we will all of us be happy, every
one.
What is the point of fame? Really, what is it all about? What
does it come down to? To me, it means the person seeking fame
wants others to know him as a superior being than they are. He
wants to be known in as many places as possible. They way to
achieve this that is taken by most is to get one's mug seen on the
television. That way, many people can see one. Better than a
photograph for the greedy self seeker is a clip of them conveying
some kind of substance found in the newspaper or television. Find
a fine book with merit to study from. Trust authors who have a good
relationship to the written word.
Learn much about yourself through books. There is nothing wrong
with getting to know the author of books if they are worthy people
and greedy and selfish and empty. Fame is such an empty thing.
It fades away so quickly. If one's name truly survives through the
generations it is not fame but merit that carries one's name. People can
distinguish merit. So, I would urge everyone not to seek fame. One day
you would have your face on television, the next nobody will know you.
And in the process the worst thing happens by far and that is you have sold your soul for something unproductive.
Your soul will be ruined in the search for fame, for it is a laborious process
that will leave little room for anything productive. In the modern age, all anyone wants is fame. That is all people care about, and they look up to movie stars as their role models. I do not care for fame. All I need is a good book and my writing and walking and music.

Nietzsche

This man is a paradox. A self-styled monster, he is one of the most humane men I know. He has a bad reputation I know, but one has to get beyond a surface or dogmatic judgement about him by reading all his books to get a good overall picture of him. Sometimes he can admittedly get kind of harsh, but he is a kind humane man (a modern Socrates though not so wise). He tends to rejoice in his own wickedness at times, which is the bad thing about him (see ending one of his books, Beyond Good and Evil, thinking of wickedness). He can be kind of conceited, also, thinking he is from a Polish noble stock. Also, thinking too highly of himself in Ecce Homo. Too bad about his having lost his almost most important friend in Richard Wagner, which must have disappointed him a lot. I do not think Thus Spoke Zarathustra is necessarily his best book. He is brave for writing through his migraine headaches, which might have prevented him from writing more fluidly and more systematically.
I think Nietzsche was a man of contradiction because his humane character was not reflected in his writings taken separately but can only be seen in them as a whole. One has to read all his books to find this humane character that thus gradually comes through.

Ideas for a book:

on Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Hegel (maybe), Kant, Kierkegaard, Plato, and some Aristotle.

Take ideas from each philosopher that interested me. Maybe take notes from various texts. Nietzsche and Plato are the ones I read furthest back in my life, ideas partially less clear in relation to them (very general). Could compare the different philosophical texts. Could write either a fluid whole or a book of separate paragraphs a la Nietzsche or Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Could even include poets like Holderlin and more. Could do a book on, say, each of the philosophers' books like one on the Tractatus, though not each one of Nietzsche's (it would be better to take Nietzsche as a whole). Or could write a book of my own philosophical reflections.
I cannot remember too much about Nietzsche though I remember the tightrope in Zarathustra very well. There is a tightrope between man and the superman. I bet the comic book character Superman is named after Nietzsche. In Wittgenstein's Tractatus I remember the end vividly, where one has the ladder to go on to higher things. The Tractatus is a success because it provides this ladder to mystical thought. So in a way the Tractatus is superior logic logic in that it provides a ladder to get beyond the traditional logic. I guess Wittgenstein himself said he read little or none of Aristotle (who of course has the famous works of logic under the title Organon). Wittgenstein is also good at mindgames. He has an acute psychological sense in Philosophical Investigations. I like his rabbit diagram, representing to the mind two pictures at once. I also like his picture theory of language in the Tractatus where, say, the word table is like a picture or a snapshot of the actual entity table.
This pictures theory greatly affected me; it is very powerful to the mind, which is why it has stuck with me. Also, how everything in the world is the case, which is in the beginning of the book. I guess most of Nietzsche's books are full of "aphorisms," not paragraphs really. Well, they are called "aphorisms." I liked the Frege book on it made a big positive impression on me. I remember of all Nietzsche's books Zarathustra best, and it was also the first book of his that I was exposed to.
At one point Zarathustra comes down from his mountain solitude to teach the people, but they reject him not because Zarathustra is inferior, but it is because the people are inferior. They do not want to learn from him, they do not have the requisite good curiosity to learn from this enlightened one who only wants to teach them. If Zarathustra existed these days, he would be in a mental asylum! 

7/17/06

I think and view Thucydides and the Ray Monk book as a break from the heavy hitting I normally do.  I am proud that I relatively recently finished The Critique of Pure Reason from which Kant told me and taught me a lot about philosophy.  Wittgenstein's logic I would venture is an advance over that of Aristotle, and I would be interested to compare Hegel's, Kant's, and Wittgenstein's logic to see who comes out on top or if they eventually all say the same thing.  I used to hate logic years ago, but now this branch of philosophy really interests me.  The books I am reading now are all right, but nothing that I am passionate about, so this marks a change for me (an unwanted change).  I just do not have the energy to read the deep books now that I want to read with the recent exception, though, of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 

Continued at a later date:

I recently finished Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes, which as opposed to some parts of Fear and Trembling was clear and concise.  Descartes is very clear, very clear with not a word that does not fit in with his dialectic with not a word that does not make sense.  I have a lot of bottled-up feelings about the books I have been reading by (in chronological order) Nietzsche, Descartes, Tolstoy, and Kierkegaard; I probably should address these feelings!  Nietzsche's On The Genealogy of Morals was all right overall, good beginning but bad end.  He is full of hatred, and yet at times his hatred is justified and could be termed intellectual passion.  In Kierkegaard only this one chapter where he tells the bridal story is it confusing, obscure, and abstruse.  The rest is an amazing show of intellect, which is quite enjoyable to read.  

System of Philosophy

What is philosophy? A system of thought passed down through the ages. There has been philosophy ever since man became self-conscious. At least ever since there has been language. I can see how a first question would be, "Why?" This is not a statement but a question. I wonder what came first, statements or questions. A statement answers a question, or a statement comes after the statement.
The first philosophers likely had a problem with language, with proper communications. They lacked the proper language, which made things difficult. Now on the other hand, language has become twisted, commercialized, and let down and hence corrupted by modern technology, namely, the television and the Internet. Language has lost its meaning, words lose their beauty and force. We find that in the Information age, that sometimes we are near some meaningless words and numbers.
I would love to return to before we had this problem, namely, to the Greeks and Romans and to the time close before the twentieth century (the 17th to 19th centuries being key times in the development of modern philosophy). In my view, the middle ages produced little philosophical merit, and the times between Aristotle and "modern philosophy" I view as a Dark Age of philosophy kind of like the depraved world that we now live in.
I think that the question of why life is how it is, is an important question. I wonder myself why the universe is how it is, why humans are given this precise form and are put in the material world that we are put in. I do not know, for example, why there is the ocean or the sun and the moon. I like to think, though, that they are there to make people happy. Otherwise, why else would they be so beautiful? It is too bad that we have forgotten to appreciate the beauty of natural objects such as trees and rivers, foolishly instead having a vacuousness with computers and cellphones.
What is truth? Is it what we believe or what is commonly agreed upon or neither? Can we even know what truth is? Do we even have a true notion of what truth is? Surely the very fact that we are self-conscious entitles us to some portion of the truth. Do we even have a true definition of what truth is? What exactly do we know? It would appear to me that the true is the good. The highest amount of knowledge us humans have is the true and the good. So this is why people with less knowledge are the more contemptible, people with more knowledge are more perfect and are more part of the higher good that they know than ignorant people. I do not, however, equate knowledge with book knowledge necessarily, as bookworms can be utterly one-sided and ignorant about the true, crystalline facets of life.