The song, "A Thousand Miles", means a great deal to me. Let me explain what it means. The point of this lyric is to emphasize the illusory nature of the senses and highlight the inner world of experience and how it trumps the former. For, just as St. Peter had expressed right before he was crucified upside, he explained that the world was upside down. Obviously not the physical globe that floats about in space, but rather all that is captured by the senses. It's as if the epistemic faculties of Man were flipped, and all that is right is wrong, all that is good is evil, all that is up is down and all that is to the right is to the left. Our understanding of Space, Physics, Science is all moot; nay is certainly inadequate to capture all that there is to experience; one may as well try to scoop up the entire ocean with a serving bowl. And so, the action of falling into the sky is nothing more than falling into our graves, where the heavens are the ground and the greater outer space is nothing more than the dirt and soil of reality.

Sidewalks

They are the running boards of our lives where we come and go to places of short distance. They are the children’s canvas where the earliest works of art are sketched with chalk. They are cracked and split with time, but remain for longer than our lifetime. They are the trains of princes and kings and queens, yet the least of our pets do their business on them: So simple in design, but displaying the most intricate of patterns in their ‘grainy’ texture. Both the state and the citizen own them, and neither can claim the whole of them. They are sidewalks, those cemented floors which lay between house and road; between where we are and where we wish to go. It is upon these urban paradoxes I find myself perplexedly musing, or rather, walking and bike riding on a daily basis. And the inhabitants of my neighborhood are most content with whatever their occupation is as they are scattered alongside it. They are watering their lawns, jogging by me, playing at the park that sits down from it and all other sorts of things. But I wonder if they look down at it and think to themselves, “where does this go and where does it come from?” For as much as we know about them, none of us can account for their geography, etymology or even eschatology. And while I suspect that the most imaginative of our children may fancy some pit of monsters or stormy abyss at the end of them and the beginning a place where rainbows shoot from, our own answers couldn’t be any better. After all, we take their existence for granted while investing so much time on and around them. And it’s not like we couldn’t do without out them. But, like Robert Frost’s explanation as to why settlers called maize corn, they ‘seem to comforts us.’ According to the children’s author Shel Silverstein, in his poem Where the Sidewalk Ends Silverstein gives a rather vivid account of this location. As such, it is where “the street begins,” where “the grass grows soft and white,” where “the sun burns crimson bright” and where “the moon-bird rests from his flight.” So, this could be any rural area where sidewalks merely do not reside. But this says nothing to where they end. Not to mention where they begin: For where they are and where they are not must meet somewhere in the intermediary cosmos of villa to village. Is it the yawning void of Nordic Mythology where Ymir the giant gave birth to the nine worlds? Is it that purgatory in Dante’s Inferno: Or some Stygian realm at the foot of Elysium? Now while this is all magnificently spectacular speculating, I think I know where all sidewalks come from and where they end up: Where we are all coming from and going to. They begin when we begin and end when we end. They are that part of us that we see so little of even when thinking deeply and analyzing our own self-identity. They are the first and last of our steps. Like Aristotle’s definition of time, they are the before and after, but not of motion but of motivation. They are that general and abstract expression of why we do the things we do. And perhaps this is why we overlook them so. For, like us, there is infinitely more to them than meets the eye.

The Tear Drop by Algernon Gedgrave
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"The Tear Drop" one of Amazon's HOT new releases in the genre of Fantasy. I can't guarantee you will be entertained by reading it as much as I CAN guarantee that a part of you will change after reading it.

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Epistemic Justification: Should It Be Viewed as a Meta-Epistemic Process by Robert Lewis Henry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Although it is a technical work, weaving in and out of the theories of Foundationalism and Coherentism, this title does an excellent job in not only making epistemological theories readable, but clarifying several points.

The first point it clarifies is the tension between the two primary epistemically justifying theories: Foundationalism and Coherentism.

Another point is its proficiency in presenting a coherent model of the issues in epistemic justification and presenting the problems and their solutions intelligibly. For, many works on the topic tend to 'muddy' the waters, but this manages the exact opposite.

All in all, its conclusion that epistemic justification should be viewed as a metaepistemic process, helps, indeed, relieve tension concerning these competing theories.

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At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book, among the innumerable titles of books that have been penned through the history of papyrus scrolls and printing presses, is by far the most influential work I have had the pleasure of reading. The character of Diamond is one that transcends personalities and typical literary categorization. Rather, he is the archetype of that paradox of simplistic brilliance.

Furthermore, Diamond's trip to the back of the North Wind, the beautiful, blustery essence of the north wind, finds himself in the same situation as those in classical literature, such as Dante; whom MacDonald cleverly disguises under the name Durante. Afterwards, this simple child finds the truth of the mystery of world and waking reality. He finds a place where death has no hold and, like the realm of Heaven, is not only real, but so real it manages to melt the silly, superficial fodder of what our senses relay to us of the physical, natural world.

If I could choose one title that atheists and materialists would despise, and one that would encapsulate the meaning of Life and the joy and awe of existence, undoubtedly this would be the choice I would make!

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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/269713.At_the_Back_of_the_North_Wind" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="At the Back of the North Wind" border="0" src="https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347963513m/269713.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/269713.At_the_Back_of_the_North_Wind">At the Back of the North Wind</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2413.George_MacDonald">George MacDonald</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/757620533">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
This book, among the innumerable titles of books that have been penned through the history of papyrus scrolls and printing presses, is by far the most influential work I have had the pleasure of reading.  The character of Diamond is one that transcends personalities and typical literary categorization.  Rather, he is the archetype of that paradox of simplistic brilliance.  <br><br>Furthermore, Diamond's trip to the back of the North Wind, the beautiful, blustery essence of the north wind, finds himself in the same situation as those in classical literature, such as Dante; whom MacDonald cleverly disguises under the name Durante.  Afterwards, this simple child finds the truth of the mystery of world and waking reality.  He finds a place where death has no hold and, like the realm of Heaven, is not only real, but so real it manages to melt the silly, superficial fodder of what our senses relay to us of the physical, natural world. <br><br>If I could choose one title that atheists and materialists would despise, and one that would encapsulate the meaning of Life and the joy and awe of existence, undoubtedly this would be the choice I would make!
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Helen's Fall

Oh, Helen of Troy.  For ten years you spent a blissfully autumnal 'captivity' by the hands of the Trojans.  Oh, they say you 'longed' to be returned to your beloved Greece.  A war tore through both empires, drenching the land with warm blood, pouring into the Aegean until its salt turned to red tears.  All the while, you cried out to Athens! Sparta! Thebes! Your homeland!  But, I am not convinced by any of it.

I know you Helen all too well.  I know what crocodile tears well up in your eye sockets and inspire the poets to call to their gods.  I doubt even Zeus would have seen the lie that you uttered under the alter, in the ashen tray of incense.  You fear your secret, hidden deep within your rancid heart of maggot ridden meat, will be revealed.  Well Helen, it's too late.  I know what you want; I know what you truly desire.  

I call to Pan, to Dionysus.  For they, among the gods, alone are immune to your charms and wayward temptations.  I call to you to help me with her lies, bring clarity to my mind and heart, and, like Boethius' consolation of Philosophy, lift me out of this bodily suffering and concupiscence and in the arms of a forest at the edge of Space and Time.