by Ed Mooney
Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song. — Salman Rushdie There […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, children, death, love, poetry, reading, writing
by Ed Mooney
I s creation, in the arts, or elsewhere, a matter of chutzpah or daring — perhaps of overweening pride? It often is. And sometime it’s a matter of humility, stepping aside, letting another speak through one. Thus the Odyssey begins, Sing in me muse, Sing of the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course This makes the poet almost incidental to the creation. Can we generalize here? No doubt some poets are models of humility […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: books, literature, philosophy, writing
by Ed Mooney
The only good thing that came out of 9/11 was that the building fell on him. –Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA anti-bin Laden task force, testifying before a congressional committee, applauding the death of John O’Neill, former head of the FBI’s NYC anti-terrorist task force. The New Yorker has begun to produce short documentaries to view on line. The topics are as varied as the contents of any recent print issue, and the stories might […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: death, ethics, New York City
Fantasy has it rough. It bears a reputation of being trivial, flashy, adolescent, and entertainment-driven. Indeed, some fantasy is. But, such a judgment is unfair to good fantasy, which is none of the above. Because fantasy is so blatantly allegorical, when it is good, it reveals a forthright understanding of how reality functions. And, when it is great, it resembles myth, with its godlike way of adding meaning to life. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (2015) raised many literary eyebrows when it came out because it dared […]
Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: book, fantasy, Kazuo Ishiguro, reading, writing
by Ed Mooney
Memorable lines from William Blake: Twofold, twofold always May God us keep From single vision And Newton’s sleep Imagination lets us see the world as other than a Newtonian assembly of spinning atoms (updated to Quarks), or as a Darwinian stage for Fitter-gene transmissions, or as a Brainy locus for neurological pathways. Blake was worried about a physics take-over of claims to reality. The situation is more complex today, with a variety of sciences vieing for top […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: death, literature, poetry, reading
by Ed Mooney
I have no complaints about living in Maine. I find good music, good restaurants, good friends in the small city of Portland. I’ve taught inland and upstate in Bangor – just this side of Old Town, home of the classic canvas canoes I grew up with and rigged for sailing in a tidal river that opens on Buzzards Bay. That inlet-laced coast reminds me of the Maine Coast. There’s an older, slower, pace to life here. All this nostalgia […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, Uncategorized, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, education, literature, reading, technology, writing
by fritztucker
Two weeks ago I wrote about the relationship between privacy and power, and how may of today’s spokespeople for the oppressed focus more on stopping surveillance in the name of privacy than daring to call for surveillance of oppressors, or imagine ways that surveillance could be used to create a world devoid of oppression. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about our current obsession with privacy. In The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, […]
Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: books, capitalism, civil rights, crime, criminals, ethics, literature, New York City, philosophy, politics, reading, social justice, technology, women, writing
by Ed Mooney
Bakhtin coined the term “carnivalesque’ to mark literary works with multiple, contrasting, and forever-competing centers of gravity. These paintings above have multiple, contrasting, and forever-competing centers of gravity. They’re done by someone new in my world, Octavio Ocampo. These images help with Dostoevsky, Bakhtin, and Cervantes — with Paris, 9/11, Easter, and Brussels And they just won’t hold still! One is called “Kiss […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, death, literature, philosophy, writing
by Ed Mooney
Richard Dawkins’ head is fizzing with mad thoughts.. . . Outside a shimmering band of turquoise near the horizon brings a soft sparkle to the beads of dew hanging from trees in early bud; the heavy clouds in the distance look peach-pink and insubstantial; so do the old pale brick houses that line his street. The birds are singing in riotous chorus. “Accept my genetic information, females of my species!” they sing. “Observe my superior fitness for survival, as […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, philosophy, poetry, politics, science
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