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STOIC POETRY | Seeing between the Distraction
Just every once in a while...every so often...I'll spot the Indifference between the moments of my daily life. For, while the Nothing...

Kurt Bell
Aug 18, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | What there isn't beyond the sea
Life is a little like coming awake on an island beach, naked and screaming and vulnerable and weak. The natives here do care for us, and...

Kurt Bell
Aug 17, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | The upward ground
"...and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward!" -Henry David Thoreau I accept life as hard. I...

Kurt Bell
Aug 15, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | The bullseye aim
Whenever I strive, I always fall short. For the fact of striving makes me miss the mark. It would be better to become educated, without...

Kurt Bell
Aug 14, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | When our finding days are done
Before I was alive I'm pretty sure I simply did not exist. Oh sure, the stuff of which I am made was around, and the energy which courses...

Kurt Bell
Aug 11, 20203 min read


STOIC POETRY | The hole along the way
I've always been one to notice the hole in the fabric of humanity, where one may press through a finger to the place outside. You can...

Kurt Bell
Aug 7, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | A brief time to truly live
The Great Indifference exists wherever we are not distracted by ourselves. It is the substance of the universe that isn't—not empty...

Kurt Bell
Aug 5, 20203 min read


STOIC POETRY | More to life than living
There is so much to occupy the time of life. So much to do. So many people to know, and love, and pass the time together with. One thing...

Kurt Bell
Aug 4, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | The virtue of temperance
For what reason is temperance a virtue? Why do the sages live in austerity, and the desert fathers forsake the world, and the poet love...

Kurt Bell
Aug 3, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | Knowing when to stop watching
It is not easy to not watch someone else struggling with life. I am not referring to not seeing them struggle, but not watching them do...

Kurt Bell
Aug 1, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | Words like flowers upon a table
Words are like clay in the hands of a potter, who might pound together a rough cup and offer it "here!" as an implement of utility. And...

Kurt Bell
Jul 31, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | Adrift across a desert night
In his book Walden, specifically in the chapter titled "The Ponds", Henry David Thoreau describes the seasons and moods of Walden Pond as...

Kurt Bell
Jul 30, 20203 min read


STOIC POETRY | The road into night
Such a long hike to get here, now. The place where I set out from is invisible beyond those distant hills, a memory of setting out from a...

Kurt Bell
Jul 28, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | A prison of consequence
I keep forgetting - fooling myself, really - that I could be in any circumstance other than the one in which I find myself now. It's fun...

Kurt Bell
Jul 27, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | The way things are likely to be
Our personal nature is our most visible evidence that our will is never fully free: as how many forces of my personal being - my...

Kurt Bell
Jul 26, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | Swimming to a park bench by the sea
I swam yesterday in the sea. I swam possibly too far yesterday in the sea, as I am today quite worn and spent. I expect that this is a...

Kurt Bell
Jul 18, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | An uncomplaining camp
Emotions are a curious thing to ride upon. They jump and jostle and jolt and then rest, before picking up again and tossing all about. As...

Kurt Bell
Jul 16, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | Such a life to live
How much more decorous a possession than honest self-reflection; though there is nothing to see in such wealth besides the owner's...

Kurt Bell
Jul 15, 20201 min read


STOIC POETRY | A time for reinvention
I believe that Yumiko and I are as prepared for our new life together as we might hope to be. With our daughter leaving us this coming...

Kurt Bell
Jul 8, 20202 min read


STOIC POETRY | Ad Aster and The Great Indifference
Yumiko and I watched a movie last night called Ad Aster, starring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones. We enjoyed the film, which is a science...

Kurt Bell
Jul 7, 20202 min read
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