I just spent five days inhaling the smoke from the fires of dead people. Less than 100 paces from where I was staying is the burning ghat along the Ganges river. Over three hundred people a day are turned to ash there. I saw as many as 12 fires going at once. I rented a…
Philosophy makes a wise person foolish. Beware to those who pursue it for wisdom, beware to those who love knowledge, beware. Truth, for those who desire it, should be pursued in life, and not in study. Only through ignorance is truth possible, for all knowledge reveals is untruth. By parting the drapes of the mind…
At the end of the nineteenth century, a new literary tradition began to emerge that we now popularly call existential fiction. Authors like Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Knut Hamsun began portraying absurd, vile, or illegal acts to highlight man’s free will, and highly unreasonable approach to life. They no longer created their heroes out of the…
Every year I get a little deeper into the country and come to understand the culture even more. This year I made huge strides in learning Hindi: reading, writing, grammar. My pronunciation still causes a great deal of confusion, but at least I can communicate with the locals a little bit beyond getting my necessities…