I think I could be happy being a monk/scholar/priest, whatever you want to call it. A person who leaves behind 'life' in order to devote themselves to the world of the mind/spirit. If I could spend every waking hour studying, reading, learning, teaching, etc, I think I could give up material possessions and all the …
Mind games
I've started reading 'The Glass Bead Game' by Herman Hesse, mainly because the title made me think of go. The story features a fictional game that is very abstract and deals with concepts and ideas as the 'pieces'. The players are intellectual elites who use pieces of knowledge or pieces of culture to play their games. The …
Never stop never stopping
If you've got momentum, keep it! Because once you give it up you will have to expend ten times the energy to get it back. How many times have I said "write every day?" Probably a lot, but, I am trying to write every day here... and it bears repeating! If you don't write tomorrow, …
Painting with words
I imagine sometimes that writing descriptively must be like painting, though I've not done much painting in my life. You get an idea in your head, and you choose the right colors, the right palate, the right style, to get the image you want across. Is finding the right word like finding the right color …
Trading instincts for intelligence
I thought the other day about how animals know what to eat and how to find it, seemingly from birth. Do animals accidentally eat poisonous or harmful things? It doesn't seem like it. But we humans, we don't know how to eat, how to catch food, how to prepare it, until we're taught. We don't …

