• Clarifications on empathy

    Tuesday, June 28, 2022 4:20 a.m. I don’t know if it is worthwhile to pursue the subject of empathy. Up to you. We got a few responses. Why not deal with them in a few words of explanation? Feel free.   Simon Hay [in a comment on my blog]: I was ready to give my…

  • Our guys upstairs and our choices

    Wednesday, June 29, 2022 7:15 a.m. Anything on your minds, particularly? You might pursue your thoughts about the Sixth Great Extinction. If you wish, but what’s the relevance to anything we’re talking about? Anything, discussed in an unfamiliar context, has the potential to do two things, regardless of the subject, regardless of the opinion: (1),…

  • Internal criticism

    Friday, July 1, 2022 6:15 a.m. I had thought to sleep later, but friend cat thought otherwise, and at 5:45 I capitulated. So, no public session yesterday, but progress on the novel. Only a tiny bit, but in the right direction. Any need for a session today, beyond staying in the habit? Need is on…

  • Truth and viewpoint

    Saturday, July 2, 2022 5:30 a.m. I dreamed of a Kafka-esque quality to it, where he didn’t even know – and couldn’t find out – what he was accused of, or suspected of, or perhaps had done. Guys, will you give me the relevant bits of the dream I had requested, and explain? Pulling the…

  • Perceptive Ken Korczak review of A Portal to Myself

    I told you A Portal to Myself is an entertaining and profound book. If you don’t believe me, believe this review by Ken Korczak. https://medium.com/@ken.korczak/portal-to-myself-implications-of-parallel-worlds-51c141cfff73  

  • Sorting it out (but how?)

    The guys have often said that when one age ends and another begins, we reconstruct our view of reality – of what is possible and what is not – by picking and choosing. Some things we were raised to believe, we continue to believe. Other things, we discard. Some things we were raised to dis-believe,…

  • Disbelief, belief, experience

    Thursday, July 7, 2022 2:25 a.m. I awoke thinking, for some reason, about how the people who haven’t had a given experience get to discuss whether it’s possible – whether it’s real. I thought, there’s a short essay there: Disbelief, belief, experience. You had your morning blog entry in mind. I did. I was in…

  • Bob Friedman and the endless chain

    Yesterday (Thursday July 7) I went poking around one of my journals for 2019, looking for notes from my trip to Egypt, and found, tucked into the pocket, an article I had written for our local metaphysical newspaper about my old friend and former partner in Hampton Roads Publishing Co., Bob Friedman, who had died…

  • Outer life, inner life

    Friday, July 8, 2022 6:40 a.m. Okay, I get it. I thought I’d start in on notes for the novel, but you have something you want to say. Please do. Your vague discontentments – health, feelings of comfortableness or not in your body, ennui – it all is also grist for the authorial mill. You…

  • Technology and conspiracy

    In the past week, three people sent me links to someone purporting to explain the cause and corrective action of our problems with government. The trouble is, they all contradict each other! And that is because they ascribe the wrong causes to our underlying problem. Here’s what I got from Hemingway (or what I take…