Who is it that sits in the clouds planning the shape of a snowflake before it falls? Why is peppermint ice cream only sold during the cold and winter holidays? Who paints each blade of grass at night with white, glazes each branch and limb with icy frost? Where is lukewarm between hot chocolate and melting, pink peppermint ice cream? What makes the cardinal's red stand sharply out against the bare, brown winter branch?
Monthly Archives: December 2020
It is that time of the year once again. To honor the memory of our beloved daughter, Sydney Marie Brotheridge, whose passion was Neuroscience, we are opening up her scholarship fund at her Alma mater, Indiana University, for contributions. We wholeheartedly ask for your financial contribution during these next two weeks. Sydney's birthday was December 28. A matching challenge of $500 has been offered for contributions made after the first $500 collected. The first scholarship out of Sydney's fund was awarded to a Neuroscience student this past Fall. Thank you so much for your support! Brotheridge Scholarship By Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
“The End”
"The end is where we start from." - - T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
I am a teleologist of circumstance. Call it a gift, a gift to see endings. For example, I know the fate of Fate. (Clotho runs out of fiber. Lachesis breaks her measuring rod. Atropos loses her scissors.) I could tell you how Death dies. (If I did, though, the knowledge would kill you.) Just kidding. His scythe rusts to nothing. The odor of the trash heap of History fills my nose. The tides of Destiny evaporate in the expanding sun. Apocalyptic visions offered by those in slick suits don't move me. The horses of the four horsemen become dog food. All the mints made on Wall Street are eventually eaten. Just rewards, though, don't amount to too much. When all is said and done, all will be said and done. The inevitable finally gives way to evitability. The child of Necessity invents a new mother. Gazing into a crystal ball becomes a high school history lesson. END statements never end while the heaven of Neverland ever ends. The anticipation that asks the question, "What happens next?" eludes me. Mystery remains a mystery. Don't tell Alpha: Omega brings the show to a close. To conclude, I don't know how it all ends, other than with the excuse the ends justify the means and there is no ribbon at the last finish line.
4 – Of Solitude
(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)
There are some temperaments better adapted than others to these precepts of withdrawal from the world. It seems to me that it is wise, when one talks of withdrawing from the world, to look away from it. It should no longer be your concern to make the world speak of you, but how you should speak to yourself. Withdraw into yourself, but first prepare to receive yourself.
3 – Of the Soul
(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)
Our sickness is of the soul; now the soul can not escape from itself. We have a soul that can be turned to itself; it can be its own company; it has the means of attack and of defence, of giving and of receiving. Let us not fear the becoming dull in this solitude from wearisome inactivity; in lonely places be to yourself a multitude. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
2 – Of Change
(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)
Let us answer on behalf of ambition who gives us a taste for solitude. It is not that the wise man can not live content everywhere, aye, and alone, in the throng of a palace. But we do not always intelligently seek the pathway to this end. (Often we think that we have abandoned affairs when we have only changed them.) Consequently, because we are quit of the court and the marketplace, we are not quit of the chief torments of our life. Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and all greedy desires, do not desert us when we change our abiding-place. (Socrates was told that a certain person had not changed for the better in his travels. "I must believe it," said he, "for he carried himself with him.") We carry our fetters with us; it is not complete liberty; we still turn our eyes toward what we have left; our thoughts are full of it.
1 – Of the Worst Men
(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Solitude” translated by George B. Ives)
Let us leave on one side this tedious comparison between a solitary life and an active life. Let us boldly refer ourselves to those who are in the whirl. The evil methods by which men push themselves forward clearly indicate that the end is worth no more than the means. Everywhere it is possible to do good and ill; none the less, the worst men are the greater number. For good men are rare, that in a thousand there is not one good. There is great danger of contagion in a crowd. We can not help imitating the vicious or else hating them. There is danger, because they are numerous, of resembling them; and because they are unlike us, danger of hating them much. And the merchants who travel by sea are wise to look to it that those who sail on the same ship are neither dissolute nor blasphemers nor wicked men, esteeming such company unlucky.
A car passes by
A car passes by. The driver, leans up, under my mirrored, still face.
3 – Of Cruelty
(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Cruelty” translated by George B. Ives)
For my part, even in matters of justice, any thing that is beyond mere death seems to me pure cruelty. We should practice these inhuman barbarities on what is insensible, not on the living flesh. We find nothing in the ancient histories more excessive than what we experience every day. Nature has herself implanted in man some instinct of inhumanity. Considering that one master has placed us in this palace for his service. For that is the extreme limit that cruelty can attain. That a man should kill a man solely as spectacle!
2 – Of Goodness
(Found Poem in Michel de Montainge’s “Of Cruelty” translated by George B. Ives)
Can it be true that, to be really good, we must needs be so by an occult, natural and universal disposition, without law, without reason, without example? What there is in me of good I owe to the chance of my birth. I derive it neither from law, nor from precept, nor from any other teaching. I very tenderly compassionate the afflictions of another. There is nothing that draws forth my tears, save tears.
A Thread You Follow 