Author Archives: Lee

Earth a Flower

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Lee

Last week I compared the Earth to a flower hovering in the void of space. This is an image from a poem by Gary Snyder called “For Nothing”, the first five lines of which are as follows: “Earth a flower … Continue reading →

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Some Fragile Reflections

Posted on May 29, 2026 by Lee

All the troubles, all the quarrels and so-called “annoyances”, I like to think have shaped me and brought me closer to enlightenment. The more I read about Zen Buddhism, the more I come to feel that enlightenment is never a … Continue reading →

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May 1st, 1978, 6 A.M.

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lee

Allen Ginsberg is on a neon-blue lit street corner at night thinking about human beings and how they rub along together. He remembers that here near the now padlocked refrigerator shop police found bodies about this time last year. Now … Continue reading →

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Darkness and Joy

Posted on March 11, 2026 by Lee

With planes in the sky and bombs in the air, the world seems intent on returning to darkness. So let’s look at how something can come from nothing. We’re not told how Eurynome appears, only that when she does it’s … Continue reading →

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Thoughts and Truths

Posted on February 3, 2026 by Lee

In the last section of the final main chapter of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes about the journey of a thought. When it is young, a thought is “many-coloured” and “malicious”; these new thoughts surprise him and make him … Continue reading →

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Conversation

Posted on January 20, 2026 by Lee

“Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still / Even among these rocks” (T. S. Eliot, from “Although I do not hope to turn again” in Ash-Wednesday.) The poet once again doesn’t know what … Continue reading →

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Dissembling

Posted on January 14, 2026 by Lee

“… And I who am here dissembled / Proffer my deeds to oblivion…” (T.S. Eliot, from “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree,” in Ash-Wednesday.) “Dissembled” here seems to be intended to suggest “disassembled,” since the bones of the … Continue reading →

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Fog

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Lee

In “Morning at the Window,” T. S. Eliot is looking down at a foggy street and it’s the brown fog itself that seems to throw up to him “Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, / And tear from … Continue reading →

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Impatience

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Lee

“The conscience of a blackened street / Impatient to assume the world.” I’ve been thinking about these lines from T. S. Eliot’s “Preludes” over the past couple of days. The street is silent and empty at night, but we are … Continue reading →

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Shedding a Light

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Lee

In the third part of Les Misérables, Victor Hugo describes the street-urchin of 19th century Paris in a sweeping, comic-philosophical style that Henry Miller must have admired, leaping from one pithy aphorism to the next to give us a portrait … Continue reading →

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