http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/ personal philosophical essays en Copyright 2010 Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:22:32 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification This whole wide earth is a great Diaspora of beauty, and there is no way to see that beauty unless we travel to it. To stand still is to miss out on life. The reason of my discontent was not that I never found a place worth staying, but that I always saw another place worth going. http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-finite-experience-of-infinite-life http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-finite-experience-of-infinite-life Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:22:32 -0500 http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/on-being-nothing http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/on-being-nothing Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:53:28 -0500 is our body. Every atom in this moving breathing edifice called me was looted from other existences, through the food that I, or while I was in the womb my mother, ate. My living tissues are compacted of bits of the dead, my muscles were once cows' muscles, my eyeballs were carrots.]]> http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/confessions-of-a-carnivore http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/confessions-of-a-carnivore Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:46:31 -0500 When I listen to music, I wonder why I bother to write. If art should impassion, then music is art, and all other arts are music's understudies. Poems and paintings must go through the brain, using thoughts to stir feelings, but music has a backstage pass to the soul. Most cultures' mythologies have given music a divine origin, and what modern headphone-listener could wonder why? How else could arrangements of vibrating air dissolve us into ecstasy? http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/in-praise-of-passion http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/in-praise-of-passion Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:48:25 -0500 But if not mine, whose world have I stumbled into? Did God abandon creation to me? Did blind chance splatter matter into this miracle? I'd unfurl the flowers' petals and uncoil their stems to know, for they seem like signs, but no signatures are engraved within, not in characters I can read. http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-electric-present http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-electric-present Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:51:15 -0500 By day we are residents of towns and states and countries, but night reveals a different citizenship. Gazing up through the world's open roof at the worlds beyond, with awe and uncertainty we confess ourselves inhabitants of infinity. http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-lonely-race http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-lonely-race Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:49:48 -0500 http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/night-thoughts http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/night-thoughts Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:48:23 -0500 Though somber at funerals, I have felt a more stinging sadness sometimes at weddings. Into my mind, uninvited, enters the thought that all this champagne and merriment must end, that in a hundred years not a reveler in the room will be above ground. The thought of death enters such vibrant scenes as the greatest contradiction, a fate one feels is impossible yet knows is inevitable. http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/meditation-during-a-rainstorm http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/meditation-during-a-rainstorm Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:43:10 -0500 This was the world as the human mind had willed it to be, conceived it then created it according to its Euclidean desires. It was a world in which nature had no place and no right to be, except where expressly invited by sovereign man. Thus the only green I saw was the small trees planted along the streets, evenly spaced and neatly pruned, their tangle of roots invisible beneath the ground, their trunks disappearing through encircling iron grates. http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/a-visit-to-the-city http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/a-visit-to-the-city Sat, 30 Aug 2008 17:45:43 -0500 http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-great-divide http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/the-great-divide Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:47:28 -0500 Though occasionally it snows and for a day or two beauty returns, this beauty does not revive me. Snowflakes seem to whiten the world to wonder, but underneath the mask of snow the land is still lifeless. Snowfall works the embalmer's art, sprinkling powder on the corpse of the world so that death appears peaceful and pretty. http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/winter-of-discontent http://www.brianjaystanley.com/essays/winter-of-discontent Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:39:08 -0500