“Przszedłeś jako ciekawy turysta, odchodź jako bogaty pielgrzym” This inscription can be found on a plain wooden post at the base of the mountain Giewont in Zakopane, Poland. It glares at the traveler as he walks down the winding dirt path to the small hut that once served as the hermitage of Brother Albert Chmielowski. As one whose knowledge of the Polish language consists of … Continue reading Le Point Vierge: The Problem of Pilgrimage
Several old journals sit on my bookshelf here, ranging in age from ten years to a few months, several of them worn and stained, some with small mementos, slips of notepaper, receipts, and sketches, all tucked between the pages or inside their covers. Whenever life seems to be taking a rather unexpected turn, I feel compelled to revisit these old, familiar books. I always wrote … Continue reading Meditation on Memory
There they were, standing in neat rows as if in a dance aerobics class, rock-stepping and swinging their arms to music funneled out of the tiny speakers of a smartphone. The only problem was that this was definitely not a dance studio and these people were not in a dance aerobics class. Instead they, along with a diverse crowd of other visitors, were in the … Continue reading A Sense for the Sacred
Captain America, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter are ideal “heroes” for what Nietzsche would call a “democratic” soul. These caricatures of childhood imagination encourage a reversion to puerile notions of unearned self-importance among their devotees. The protagonists of these stories come from common backgrounds but are, within the first quarter of the film, serendipitously granted magical powers and a world-changing mission. To their audience, these … Continue reading Comic Heroes of the Demos
Hillsdale Forum 