Starvation

Tony said something to me tonight that resonated.  He said that he regrets that I’m not starving, because my foot-dragging with my business-development work is made possible only by virtue of a steady check from the hospital.  Were I unemployed, I’d have to sink or swim without recourse to a safety net.

He’s right, of course.  He succeeded in establishing his law practice because he suddenly found himself as an unemployed young attorney with bills and no revenue stream.  He worked, because not working was not an option.

It makes me wonder whether I should consider the nuclear option.

Aesthetics

What is beauty? This perennially vexing question, posed to neophyte college students and seasoned academics alike, has never been been answered to universal satisfaction.  Beauty is one of those concepts, like Truth or Goodness, that can be explained at length but never authoritatively defined. Yet the question of what constitutes beauty is the animating query […]

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Catharsis

My poor friend Jen.  Confronted with the task of writing several papers simultaneously as she enters the endgame of her undergraduate years, we chatted a bit about a four-page assignment she has due, a reflection on a self-selected theme from Elie Wiesel’s Night. Night is a short but powerful book, telling the story of Wiesel’s […]

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Forgetfulness

Once upon a time, I had a boss who couldn’t believe the awesome power of my mind to retain information.  I never carried a planner or calendar, and I knew all the phone numbers I needed and such — just from simple memory. Long (and boring) story short, I agreed to her demands that I […]

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Impulses v. Morals

I think one of the greatest perspectives I gained from my undergrad philosophy days came from Dr. Sylvia Culp.  Sylvia was my first grad adviser; it was hard to lose her in 2004 — far too young — to pervasive cancers.  But I had her for one of the upper-division undergrad courses on the history […]

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Harlequins

One nice thing about chatting with Edmund is that he knows a lot of people.  While he was in my office today, doing some career-enhancement activities, we detoured through his MySpace friends list.  I recognized a goodly number of names/faces — most of whom were casual chat acquaintances from when I spent more time socializing […]

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Partita No. 3

I was driving around town today and I kept forcing the same track to play on my CD player — track 37, the final movement of one of Gould’s performances of Bach’s Partita No. 3 for piano. This is a complex, ornate, sublime experience encapsulated in a mere 2:15.  Both hands fly across the keyboard, […]

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