Word for the day: synthetic a priori knowledge

The word for the day says it all... Kant sucks. I mean, if you want to set up a functioning impious ethical system, I guess you'd want to be Kant, but if you want to, you know, love God and stuff, it just doesn't do it.

My discussion on Kant today must have been the slowest discussion I've ever been in. There was no spark of vitality at all in the group, and probably less than half of the people there actually contributed to the discussion. Basically, it made for a looooong 3 hours, and we were all falling asleep at the end. If only Kant wrote clearly. I have a feeling that would have made things a lot better.

I just noticed I have two words for the day of Monday. But really, Po-mo was yesterday's word. And I should think of some better words than philosophical ones to make my theme word... because, really, my life isn't all about philosophy.

Oh, and I was thinking today about how wonderful it is to walk places. It allows thought and perception that's more acute than driving or running, which either destract by increased concentration or exertion. When you walk you can notice that the flowers are closing in the dusky twilight or that there's a small falcon perched atop a traffic light dropping the occasional feather from a roughly eaten meal. And you can pray, spend time in introspection, or muse on the days' readings. The best kind of walk is the kind of walk where you don't have to be somewhere soon, and it is possible to stop to actually smell the closing flowers, or to watch a butterfly pass an empty sidewalk late at night on some unnatural errand.

Lem talked about going to the desert this weekend. I hope so, I love the flat barrenness of the California deserts. You are alone and isolated for miles all around. I have this great memory of a desert sunrise from when I was a child. My father, brother and I went for a walk in the time just before dawn, and we were out on a plain when the sun finally pushed its drowsy glowing red eye over the flat horizon. There was, I recall very vividly, a dramatic line marking the shadow of the horizon, the place where night ended and day began, and it raced along the surface of the earth toward of us. It gave me the impression that, if I ran, I might always, just barely, stay with it, stay on that line between day and night, dark and light, innocence and knowledge, or maybe even outpace that glorious yellow orb, just for the sake of the exhiliration. I can imagine even now my small feet thudding in the sand, wind flowing through similarly colored hair, and lungs bursting from the effort to beat God. But I never could run very fast.