Despondency is the crabgrass of the soul. It chokes out joy, generative activity, hope. If you want to get rid of crabgrass you need to dig down deep enough to tear it up by the roots. The conviction of our own ineptitude is one of despondency’s observable roots. Its basis is internal to the individual [...]
Archive for May, 2008
How Society Feeds the Crabgrass (Fortitude III)
Posted in culture, life, self-improvement, society, virtue, writing, tagged "living to work", "working to live", despondency, hopelessness, rat race, society on May 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Despondency as Crabgrass (Fortitude II)
Posted in life, self-improvement, society, virtue, writing, tagged childhood, despondency, discovery, fortitude, hope, hypocrisy, life, purpose on May 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Despondency is spiritual crabgrass. It chokes out joy, generative activity, hope. If you want to get rid of crabgrass you need to dig down deep enough to tear it up by the roots. Whence despondency? What are its roots? There’s an old saying about “the straw that breaks the camel’s back”. The despondency that [...]
Haiku (VIII)
Posted in haiku, poetry, writing, tagged haiku, poetry, spring, writing on May 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Discrimination and “Satisfying the Belly”
Posted in life, virtue, writing, tagged discrimination, passion, reason, Socrates, will, writing on May 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Discrimination has gotten a bad name. In fact, if we don’t discriminate (as in exercising discernment, the telling of one thing from another), we’ll all be dead from eating that leftover in the fridge that really shouldn’t be that green and fuzzy or stepping in front of buses hurtling towards us because we just [...]
Haiku (VII) Fox
Posted in haiku, nature, poetry, writing, tagged fox, haiku, nature, poetry, writing on May 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Frail twigs bound with hay
cup the blindly peeping chicks
as wind tossed boughs flail.
One dainty black paw
extended, bright eyed red fox
pins a fallen chick.
Wing beats knife the air,
blur his sight, deafen his ears,
Snap! Snap! His jaws close…
On the empty air.
© Magdalen Jago 2008
Fortitude (I)
Posted in culture, life, self-improvement, society, virtue, writing, tagged fortitude, heroes, hopelessness, life, purpose, society, virtue, writing on May 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A friend of mine graduated from college this May. In April I went to his Senior Oral defense on Dante’s Divine Comedy and that afternoon, over a celebratory lunch, talked with another friend who had graduated from the same school (my alma mater) the year before. That conversation, which turned into a three-hour foray, [...]
Haiku (VI)
Posted in haiku, poetry, writing, tagged haiku, poetry, tea, writing on May 22, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Dead, dried up bits of
Himalayan shrubbery
revived and steaming,
the first sip scalds lips
and throat; the last leaves on the
tongue a bitterness.
Patterned dregs remain,
a tea leaf mosaic. Time
for another cup.
© Magdalen Jago 2008
Mediocrity and Standardization
Posted in culture, society, virtue, writing, tagged bureaucracy, certification, LEED, mediocrity, organic, standards, tyranny on May 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“What menaces democratic society in this age is not a simple collapse of order, nor yet usurpation by a single powerful individual, but a tyranny of mediocrity, a standardization of mind, spirit, and condition …” Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Eliot (2001)*
A standard is something established by authority, custom, or general [...]
Haiku (IV & V)
Posted in haiku, nature, poetry, writing, tagged haiku, poetry, rain, storm, writing on May 18, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Haiku IV
Mist drips drops, rain rains.
Laid in a dryer season,
the footpath is gone.
© Magdalen Jago
Haiku V
Storm air shimmering,
strings of cloud beads, lightning torn,
sink toward pools of sky.
© Magdalen Jago
Squirrels – Eichhörnchen
Posted in nature, writing, tagged nature, spring, squirrels on May 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
There were eight of them, the roundest, fluffiest squirrels I have ever seen, busily chirruping to one another, perched on the fence and the lower branches of the pines and walnut tree that cluster at the end of the drive. Their conference was punctuated by brief bursts of scurrying over and under one another in [...]
