The Life of Chuck by Stephen King

 

           The Life of Chuck by Stephen King 

St. James

Just for the record, as I typed the title of this post the Steelers v. Bengals game announcer referred to a player named Jesse JAMES. Just sayin'.

Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda

 

"...people tell us from the time we are born that the world is such and such and so and so, and naturally we have no choice but to see the world the way people have been telling us it is." (254)

I ripped through the first two Carlos Castaneda books (The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge & A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan), but then I ran into the "Carlos Castaneda is a fraud!" stuff * as I started Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan and it made me stumble. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought (1) these criticisms don't seem valid to me based on my reading and (2) does it really matter? I actually prefer fiction to non-fiction anyway, and if a book brings you enlightenment in some form, what does it matter if it's not "real"? Valis is still the most enlightening book I've ever read, and it is fiction. Mostly.

Anyway, I got back to JtI at low key, then set it aside for a few months. But when I picked it up again, it pulled me right back. So much so that I'm pretty sure that I'm going to Crack open Tales of Power any minute now.

News as it happens.

* See the "Existence of Don Juan Matus"@ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda for the gory details.

Thinking of you...

 

She'll miss me--

not my love

but the taste of my blood....

Charles Bukowski

"the escape"

Hannah Arendt

From Hannah Arendt (2012)

“In refusing to be a person, Eichmann utterly surrendered that single most defining human quality, that of being able to think. And consequently, he was no longer capable of making moral judgments. This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the likes of which one had never seen before. It is true, I have considered these questions in a philosophical way. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge, but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.”