Word of the Day – Sophistry

  • Noun:  Sophistry
    1. subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation
    2. sophism
  • Synonyms:
    1.  paralogy
    2. paralogism
    3. false logic
    4. fallacious reasoning
    5. flaw in the argument
    6. inconclusive reasoning
    7. reasoning in a circle
    8. begging the question
  • Usage:
    1. “Privately, he knew that this was sophistry and so did any other Member competent to judge the matter.”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Methuselah’s Children.

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Word of the Day – Liminal

  • Adjective: Liminal
    1. of, relating to, or situated at a sensory threshold : barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a response liminal visual stimuli
    2. of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional … in the liminal state between life and death.
  • Synonyms:
    1. transitional
    2. changeover
    3. interim
    4. changing
    5. fluid
    6. in flux
    7. unsettled
    8. intermediate
    9. indistinguishable
    10. inappreciable
    11. imperceptible
  • Usage:
    1. “… and one I’m actually quite good at, hovering in the liminal space between sensitivity and paranoia.”
  • Encountered:
    1. Reading the essay Not Grumpy Cat in Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights: Essays

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Word of the Day – Exogamy

  • Noun: Exogamy

    1. marriage outside of a specific group especially as required by custom or law
  • Synonyms:
    1. marriage
    2. wedlock
    3. spousal
    4. relationship
    5. intermarriage
    6. matrimony
    7. union
  • Usage:
    1. “’Most societies,’ she went on, ‘practice both exogamy and endogamy–a man must marry outside his family but inside his nation, race, religion, or some large group, and you Free Traders are no exception; you must cross to another moiety but you can’t marry fraki.'”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

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Ernest Hemingway on Buddhism

Not really… but the following quote from Ernest Hemingway’s short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place made  me wonder.  Nada is Spanish for nothing.  In my mind I was making a connection with the Buddhist concept of no-self or emptiness and of the concept of suffering.   In actuality Hemingway’s character was speaking of the anxiety or the despair of loneliness (suffering?). But it did give me pause.  In any event, I just love the pattern and sentiments of this excerpt.

 “What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not in to nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

Om mani padme hum

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Joy on a spring day

At Creve Coeur Lake Park where I ride my bicycle occasionally, they rent quadricycles. This Saturday, on the other side of the lake from the rental shack, I encountered one of these 4 wheeled, multi-passenger surreys with the fringe on top .

In the front seat were two 50ish, slightly overweight women, looking somewhat exhausted as they had just come up a steep incline.  In the back seat, not pedaling, was another women.  She appeared to be in her late 80s, and she was leaning over with her head between the heads of the women in the front seat.  The older woman was laughing loudly and joyfully with a look of bliss on her face.  Obviously being out on a beautiful spring day with these two women was bringing her much delight, despite the snail pace of their vehicle. She was so totally in the moment that she unknowingly shared her joy with me. What a nice, serendipitous gift on a Saturday morning.

Joy is where you find it.

Be well.

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