I really like this waka and its hanka, a shorter poem summarizing a series of poems. Perhaps its the juxtaposition of the somewhat pretensious descriptions of the scenery and the simplicity of the author's intentions or perhaps it's the contrast between the very metaphorical waka and the nearly literal hanka. Both poems are from the Man'youshuu, an ( Read more... )

I really like this poem:
Like the fire lit by the guards of the imperial palace that burns by night and fades in the afternoon, I sink into melancholy
-anonymous Nara period poet, trans. Haruo Shirane, modified by me-

If I were just a little bit sadder all the time, I'd think I was depressed. I don't mean to be glib despite how sneeringly trivial that last sentence seems. It's the only explanation I can think of for my inertia, the deep, nearly-comatose sleeps I'm always ready to (and do) sink into alternating with bouts of insomnia. I've become terribly, ( Read more... )

I'm moving to Riverdale 15 December. I found a nice 1 bedroom there at a reasonable rent. The building is a bit dark and shabby, but it suits me. I plan to turn a corner of the big living room into a study and enjoy the luxury of empty space in the bedroom. The kitchen's small, but a big improvement over the one in my current apartment, and it's ( Read more... )

I'm moving at the start of the next term, earlier if at all possible. It's irreconciliable differences of course: I can no longer stand garbage dumped anywhere and everywhere, rotten food leaking in the refrigerator, grease on the stove top, dirty dishes in the sink for hours and days, unannounced guests, her 2am shrieking phone calls when I'm ( Read more... )

Today while procrastinating/recovering from a migrane, I read the wedding announcements in the Sunday Styles. Nearly all the successful men (lawyers, doctors, honors graduates from Ivy League schools) were marrying elementary school teachers, corporate drones, graduates of state universities/mediocre liberal arts colleges, and their less-lauded-at- ( Read more... )

They already posted the courses for next semester, and I'm disappointed that I can take neither Hume nor Vagueness. I'm especially disappointed about vagueness because A. Varzi is supposed to be as awesome a professor as he is a human being, and I'm very interested in nihilism and transvaluation (in an non-Nietzschian/continental context as my ( Read more... )

Somewhat surprisingly, I'm getting good at this whole grad student thing. Although I went out on a limb and wrote a paper arguing that accepting simple hedonism entails accepting that reason cannot motivate action for my Plato class, W. Mann and K. Vogt really liked it. It was really fun to write, and it's giving me a better sense of how I want to ( Read more... )

Men are apt to judge a philosophy by the personality of its creator, and alongside the popular caricature of Kant's doctrines there has grown up a similar travesty of his character...[A] picture of him has become popularly accepted in which he is a figure of fun, the traditional philosopher, unable to think when the trees begin to obscure the face ( Read more... )

As for autumn, [it is] dusk. When the setting sun shines and comes very near to the mountain's edge, even [the sight of] three or four or two or three crows, thinking that it's time to go to their sleeping places and flying hurriedly by, is moving. Moreover, lined up wild geese lined up [and] looking very small [in the distance] is charming. I ( Read more... )