Immortal Curiosity

Each moment I hope to apply pen to paper, to touch upon one of the currents flowing in my mind, finally to find it acceptable, and possess the unified awareness to divert its flow into ink. I hope it will pool into glyphs of sufficient ability to later remind of their progenitors. But my thoughts, my awareness, this world, these senses, this moment– each becomes, by unique turns, ever more faceted, allowing of ever more interpretations, re-considerations, contemplations. What was passed over as easily as a single step on level ground one year is revealed to be treacherous and filled with difficulty the next. This pattern is further reinforced by my thoughts on the past and my mind as it was, or seemed to be.

Our sun-like consciousness shines a single beam, intent on clarification, into the icy cavern of our thoughts, producing an endless series of reflections, diversion, refractions, and schisms. And the interference of this action is permanent, for even if the beam cases in failure, its warmth has melted some small portion of the cavern, dripping and re-solidifying, ensuring a second attempt will never reveal the same scene again.  Read more... (304 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

Concerning Richard Tarnas’ “Cosmos and Psyche“–

Having not heard of the book before coming across it sitting on a shelf, I perfunctorily read the description on the back cover. The paragraph revealed what might be quite an interesting and informative philosophical and scientific work, as others I had come across. But the phrase “correspondence between planetary alignments and the archetypal patterns of human history” threw me for quite a loop. Astrology? From a “distinguished philosopher”? Something must be amiss. It did make me curious enough to purchase the work, of course.

I mention the above observation because it initiated a process in my mind as I started reading the work that I found quite interesting. Despite my initial surprise at what the book’s content might be, after I started reading I tried to put all astrological thoughts out of my mind, and simply read the work for what it was to be. However, I kept noting a tendency in Tarnas’ diction that coalesced into the conclusion that he either had read many works of a astronomical, cosmological, or astrological nature (or had a smaller number in his mind quite distinctly) or that he was perhaps purposefully trying to remind the reader of these subjects without discussing them directly. He used “constellate” at least three times in the first 25 pages [edit: Make that 5 in the first 37! [And more. I give up.]]. While a fine enough word, it is quite uncommon. One corpus search of several million words had it listed 13 times. Another term was “nadir”, and there were several others.