Yesterday I walked the Elk Lick Trail in the Bernheim Research Forest. This druid sycamore stood in the middle of the lick, its feet wet, sunk in its stone bed, to my eye one of Tolkien’s Ents paused to take a long drink. Stepping from rock to rock, my foot slipped and the stream’s other waters flowed into my shoe. I felt Heraclitus’ smirk like a tick on my back.
Pilgrim’s progress: 13,810 steps, 5.4 miles. Going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it, on my way to Finisterre.
Posted in daily walk, Photography, walking
Tagged Bernheim Forest, daily walk, Finisterre, Heraclitus, pilgrim's progress, pilgrimage, walking
τήν τε οἴησιν ἱερὰν νόσον ἔλεγε καὶ τὴν ὅρασιν ψεύδεσθαι
Heraclitus, fragment 46
Gnomic doesn’t begin to describe this one. Hmm. οἴησιν is translated variously as notion, opinion, conceit, arrogance, even as bigotry. The temptation is to amplify. ἱεραν νόσον is sacred disease or holy plague–which meant to the Greeks, epilepsy.
Opinion is a holy plague?…Conceit is epilepsy?…Bigotry is the sacred disease?…(Heraclitus) said, and seeing is deceiving.
I do think a self-regarding, strongly held notion or opinion could be considered a sort of epilepsy, in which case seeing is certainly deceiving, a kind of hallucination.
Posted in Laundry List, Talking to myself letting you listen, Thought Balloon, Uncategorized
Tagged conceit, epilepsy, Heraclitus, opinion
δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης. (Click image to enlarge)
A photo a day keeps the Doctor in play.
Did my slow parkour on the 400+my0 Devonian rocks at the Falls of the Ohio this fine, cold, clear morning. Herakleitos said, “You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are flowing into you.” The Ohio River at the Falls is never the same twice, and I go down to let its other waters flow into me.
The morning selfie:
Get out in the sun while you can. The Excitable Boy Weatherman in Louisville forecasts the weather for the next few days as overcast and drear.
Posted in Random Photo
Tagged Falls of the Ohio, Heraclitus, same river twice, Selfie, slow parkour, winter sunbathing
*An a mile wide and an inch deep. This phrase was originally penned by a 19th century American humorist who was not Mark Twain–Artemis Ward–about the Platte River in Colorado. It would be a considerable river, Ward continued, if it were turned on its side. This can easily be said about many Internet fads–and in these latter days if it’s a fad it is on and of the Internet–for an instance, “Internet Atheism; a mile wide and an inch deep.”
*See? Easy. Use your own confirmation bias and substitute your own Ism. The trouble is that everything and everyone in the panoptic, parasocial flatland of the Internet is, indeed, not a mile wide and an inch deep, but thousands of miles wide and a micrometer deep.
*You may think you are a discrete personality inhabiting a discrete body at a discrete location, but you are really a thin, thin film laminated together with millions of thin, thin films.
*We would make a considerable river if we were turned on our sides. But, per Heraclitus, we cannot step in the same self twice.
A photo a day keeps the Doctor in play.
Bonus poem:
Swan Lake
Two swans float
Steuben crystal
upon a lake of mercury,
a kind of necessity, in excelsus,
a kind of perfection,
a kind of hatred.
As the dusk comes on,
pale ghost galleons
glide in full sail,
like sweep hands of synchronized clocks
over the tarnished shadow
of quicksilver,
the mothers’ invention
of perpetual motion
without moving parts.
Plumed lanterns swimming in soot
fork light
to protean water:
The swans, with feathers
of slivered glass
tickle the tocks of each siren second
with the flourishes of unsounding brass,
the trumps of these gabriels
play taps in the braille of shimmers.
Heraclitus,
the man behind the frieze,
throws a lever in the waterworks,
and the river of time runs in reverse.
Sisyphus draws the bow
of an archaic smile,
shoots an arrow
back up Entropy Hill,
and bullseyes the Big Bang.
And this presocratic brain,
is pricked like Leda, in the tempus fugit,
by Zeus’ primal honk.
Posted in Old Yada, Poetry, Random Photo
Tagged Entropy, Heraclitus, Leda, Sisyphus, Swan Lake, Tempus fugit, time, Zeus
Dr. Omed's Tent Show Revival 