I crossed the Atlantic on my way from Boston to London in a haze of drunken nervousness. God, I hate the plane. The invasive thoughts pour in, crashing and slamming down into the abyss. Every jolt of turbulence bouncing my soul around in my body. Just look at me up there. Up in there […]
Our classics and great traditions are a corpse that we resurrect every time we engage with them. If neglected, they remain a corpse—rotten, dead, forgotten—to our eternal detriment. The collected wisdom of the ages, disposed with like so much refuse. When engaged with properly, they are made new and live once more to illuminate the […]
Ah, the sun! The great giver and destroyer of life; oppressive and deadly, illuminating and vital. I like to keep out of its reach. My summer days are whittled away in the shade or in the comforting gloom of a darkened room with my face in a book, anticipating the return of the cold somewhere […]
We like to ignore our problems. Glitches go on overlooked. There is disorder and chaos everywhere, right down to the core of our being. Something needs to be terminated—a bad habit, a relationship, a job, a friendship. We have problems like you wouldn’t believe. It’s an unpleasant task. There will be tears, so we distract […]
The Mass is no light listening. It’s widely considered the crowning achievement of Western Music and one of the greatest works of art ever accomplished. It’s older than the United States—though it wasn’t performed in its entirety until 1859, over a hundred years after its completion.
Modern humans have been on the planet for about 200,000 years. Civilization is only about 6,000 years old. We are still very much a product of that 194,000 years. We’ve adapted to our new surroundings surprisingly well given how rapidly our environment continues to change, yet we often and inevitably fail ourselves—or at least the version of ourselves we’re trying to be –because we are still subject to crushing biological law that has been part of our genetic makeup since before we were even the species we know ourselves to be today.
I’ve been spread thin these past few months. I slipped away a bit from my intellectual pursuits. When that happens, I can always feel a part of myself being dragged away. It’s like watching someone you love drift off on a boat whilst standing on shore, belting out a tearful goodbye. There I go. This kind of stuff […]
The sixth century was a time of extreme crisis and extraordinary survival for the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian I’s reign is the height of this empire. This is his story.
Terrifying World 