On the Arctic Glass: Opening Scene
A young man in an oversized yellow parka waited alone on the pier at the Alitak cannery, his ice-gray eyes locked on the roiling sea. . . .
On Studying Philosophy
Dear Lena,
I know a lot of time has passed since you asked me how you might get started with studying philosophy. I imagine by now you assume I’ve either forgotten or given my word on something I never intended to follow through with. I’m writing you today, finally, so that you may lay those assumptions aside. In truth, your question has preoccupied me for quite some time, and it may sound dubious, but I’ve needed this past year to reflect on how best to respond to you. . . .
The Level-Based Category Mistake
I’ve had several residual thoughts about Christian List’s philosophy since finishing my thesis on his theory of free will—too many to name, honestly—but I thought I might take a moment to sketch at least one of them out. It has to do with List’s use of levels and how that use takes advantage of an unidentified species of category mistake. . . .
Automatic Writing 1
Auto-tuning my automatic rifle. The countryside crickets playing bowstrings alongside oxbow meanders. Never heard from Miss. B again, but can’t help to think she was a rollicking lesbian in a big fur coat. . . .
Excerpt from Kubin’s The Other Side
Among my childhood friends was a strange boy whose story is well worth snatching from oblivion. I have done my best to describe at least a part of the strange events tied to the name of Claus Patera as truthfully as possible, since it is the responsibility of an eyewitness to do so. . . .
Excerpt from Rilke’s Offerings to the Lares
Several years ago, a friend of mine, Petra Watzke, and I translated a handful of poems from one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s earliest collections of poetry, Larenopfer. . . . I wanted to offer those translations to you here.
Scatter My Bones across the Earth
I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. The thought, or really the worry, manifests somatically for me as pain in my chest and arms. I think what terrifies me the most about death is what I expect to be the complete absence of my consciousness, the complete absence of my bearing witness to this world. It’s like all at once and suddenly, I’ve finally become aware of my mortality: I am finite; I will die; I will soon only be so many bones scattered across the earth . . .
Choice Paralysis: A Challenge from the Indeterminacy of Intentional Content
I recently finished my master’s thesis at Georgia State University. You can find the abstract as well as a link to the complete thesis enclosed.
The Philosopher’s Querencia
What does Nietzsche mean when he speaks of the desert in the third treatise of On the Genealogy of Morality (GM III §8, 297–298)? To borrow a term Hemingway made popular in Death in the Afternoon, Nietzsche is describing a querencia . . .