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So evidently any caffeine after 4 pm results in a nuit blanche. In spite of early-for-me rising yesterday, I was wide awake past midnight. Gave it darkness and beanbags and the old college try, but no luck. After an hour I gave up, turned on the light, and read Zen Cho's The Terracotta Bride until a quarter to four. Turned off light, eventually drifted off, and was awake at nine. And awake awake. So today has been something of a bust with every joint aching into the bargain. I miss the days when I could fall asleep just reading in bed. This I suppose is how the insomnia of old age works for me.
Reading on through the Phaedo, I am not impressed by Socrates' argument that everything arises from its opposite and that life must come from death.
Now to her lap the incestuous Earth
The son she bore has ta'en
And other sons she brings to birth
But not my friend again.
Socrates believes in a soul, an ego, that simply cycles through the cycles while I semi-Buddhistically think that's nonsense. There is no I in Buddhism-- though how then do people remember 'their' past lives? However I'm with Stoppard's Guildenstern: Death is not anything. Death is not. It's the absence of presence, nothing more. A gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound.
Reading on through the Phaedo, I am not impressed by Socrates' argument that everything arises from its opposite and that life must come from death.
Now to her lap the incestuous Earth
The son she bore has ta'en
And other sons she brings to birth
But not my friend again.
Socrates believes in a soul, an ego, that simply cycles through the cycles while I semi-Buddhistically think that's nonsense. There is no I in Buddhism-- though how then do people remember 'their' past lives? However I'm with Stoppard's Guildenstern: Death is not anything. Death is not. It's the absence of presence, nothing more. A gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound.