Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
It is what Cordelia recognized but which her father could not foresee, and the ruin of a kingdom, the loss of order and the crumbling of relationships resulted all because of the failure to recognize sincerity from entreaties based upon hidden motives of greed and the concealed hand of evil; and of the truism of ex nihilo nihil fit — that nothing comes from nothing — even Parmenides could not warn us of the consequences. […]
A book of very recent vintage, written by an anthropologist, uses an 8-letter epithet in its title. While it is always dangerous to refer to something without having read it, the various book reviewers have provided enough insights to recognize that it involves a judgment upon employment, work and the meaninglessness of many jobs held by the population at large. There would be, of course, some criticism as to the validity of such a judgment, […]
We all yearn for it, though we defy the very thought of it by living in its corollary. Simplicity is what we preach, that of which we dream and for which we strive; but, in the end, the clutter of life’s misgivings always seems to overwhelm, dominate and ultimately destroy. Do people still run off in a crazed dash and join a monastery in order to escape the complications of life? Are there such places, anymore — of a monastic order that welcomes strangers who have “lost it” […]
You look in the room and see the sweater draped over a chair. You turn your gaze elsewhere, engage the ongoing conversations and the din of others distracted. Later, you turn back your gaze again, and the sweater is gone. You look about to try and see whether someone picked it back up, is wearing it, or perhaps put it somewhere else. You imply and infer – yes, one must follow the general grammatical rule that the speaker implies while the listener infers; but you are both the speaker and the listener, the one who observes and the same one who steps outside of the conscious universe to observe the observed. […]
It is primarily a form of play or sport; but in other contexts, used as a verb, it can imply or denote the manipulation of rules in order to attain a result through unfair or unscrupulous means. As a sport, some engage in the competitive aspects of life itself, outside of the boundaries of organized or even recognized activity — as in playing “mind games” or harassment for purposes of torturing and victimizing. Fiefdoms tend to encourage that sort of gamesmanship; and while Feudal Lords no longer exist in an official capacity, they continue to pervade through vestiges of barbarity concealed in the cosmetic niceties of polite society. […]
Every few decades, there is a “new” movement which upholds the divinity of returning to the foundational core of one’s existence: of going back to being a farmer; living a life of an ascetic; stripping away all “unnecessary” accretions and accoutrements deemed as vestries of comfort and “bourgeois” by definition (whatever that means); or, in common parlance and language more amenable to the ordinary person, living more “simply”. […]
The surreal scene makes for eerie production spots for Science Fiction movies and end-of-world stories of apocalyptic tales — of men in white suits and bubble masks with breathing apparatus combing the countryside. But it is merely a spillage of hazardous material, and a team of men and women who specialize in cleaning the toxic chemicals was called in to manage, contain and clean. […]
The former is both a religious sacrament in Church doctrine, as well as a state of establishing that something is true or correct; the latter, an act or statement of support for that which was previously thought to be so. Both imply a previous state of foreknowledge, or at least an indication of some prior existence of validity; […]
It is the personal encounter, the direct engagement, that many seek to actualize in hopes of fulfillment. “If only I could speak to the person”; “If you knew the real me”; and, indeed, it is that depersonalized universe which undermines and tempers. Somehow, if we are merely one among many, like the little girl in the red dress in Schindler’s List, the singularity of the living entity shouts at us for relevance, significance, and a chance to distinguish. It is in the personalization of the deep chasm reaching down from the inertia of life, from which the sacred emerges. […]