Ancient Eastern Wisdom

“Confucius and you are both dreams, and I who say you are dreams am a dream myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a wise man may explain it; that tomorrow will not be for ten thousand generations.”

-- Chuang Tse

[Sourc: Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Lathe of Heaven”]

The Child in the Basement

David Brooks gives us dark, stirring literary exegesis of an Ursula Le Guin short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". He presents to us the hard mystery of the way social life depends on the harshest exploitation of others. It could be seen as a bourgeois rationalization, but it is the way things are, and I know that I cannot imagine these things every changing.

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Sick, Very Sick

Yesterday, when Pop said that he was going to the hospital because his cough was really bothering him, I thought he was babying himself again. However, by the time he came back home, I was more than eager to dig into his supply of cough drops. His cough seemed to suddenly fall on me like an unforecasted storm. By the time I went to bed, the whole complex of cold/flu illness fell on my head - the runny nose, the running fever, feeling weak as a kitten, the wish to die. This is my first real illness in years. I was starting to feel invincible, beyond the reach of petty influenza viruses, a real little iron man. Now here I am, shivering in bed, curled up in blankets and pillows, and I know this is going to be my little cave-home for a while.

Thank god, Pop was able to go out on his rounds today and pick up some milk. I couldn't go on eating saltine crackers all the time. It is not as though cereal, orange juice and an apple now tastes like a delicious feast to me, but at least I can eat it and it presumably gives my body something to fight this pestilence with. I do not even try to read my books. I am content to keep up on my blogging rounds, which I manage when I get up to eat a little something and watch another episode of "Breaking Bad". Then it is back to bed where I just doze and burn, and cough and cough, as I let time play my doctor.