Welcome to Ruminations!
To ruminate means to “think deeply about something, to contemplate, to consider, to deliberate, mull over, meditate on.” Interestingly enough, it also means – when referring to a ruminant (like a cow), “To chew the cud.” Here’s the interesting part: cows emit more methane when they are ruminating! So, if we appropriate the idea of ruminating for human consumption, then we are thinking deeply about something but we are probably also, once those thoughts take expression, emitting a good deal of gas, more affectionately known as bullshit. Maybe that’s all this is about – bullshit – but I hope not. I hope it rings true to most readers, an honest attempt to deal openly with ideas, abstractions, concepts, and experiences. There’s no attempt here to be unbiased or objective; instead, my belief is that we must have opinions if we’re truly alive. To be objective is to be passive; to have no opinion or point of view is to be blind; to say nothing, espouse nothing, is to upset the balance of Tao. So, I am not so much a ruminant as a ruminator: I am one who contemplates the cud and then offers up my digested version. I’ll try to do this about once a week.
It is time to put political thought on the back burner (I am too tired of The Big Lie and all of that; I leave it to pundits and CNN), and to return to my personal interests; most recently, I have been obsessed with T.S. Eliot and literary criticism,; in general, I have returned to my ongoing interest in fiction, poetry, and language (including linguistics, calligraphy, etymology). If any of these topics interest you, too, I hope you’ll find some pleasant moments here.
Please enjoy yourself!