Spirit: “an animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms,” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Our spirit is a part of us that cannot be medically identified. Our mind can be measured, quantified. Even, God forbid, dissected — but the spirit is something else. It likes in the ethereal.
The Greek word pneuma (see definition 2) translates as “breath,” and it might be said that the modern definition of the word is similar to the definition of “breath” to an ancient person: “ an invisible liquid or vapor held to travel throughout the body and to be necessary to and associated with life.” (Meriam-Webster) It’s there, we experience it, and yet, we aren’t exactly aware what it is. When it’s gone, we’re gone, and yet it’s not our thoughts, which are centered in our brain.
Questions of spirit are questions for philosophy and also of epistomology — the study of what known, and ontology, the study of what is.
Under this heading I have placed posts on “Memoir” and “Older and Wiser.” I could have put “Memoir” under “Mind,” since all writing is intellectual work. But somehow I thought memoir was more a discipline of spirit than intellect. Memoir is, perhaps, more ontological than philosophical, with the memoirist desperately trying to sift heir memories and find out what really is or was.
Older and Wiser is my name for all the blog posts on topics, such as human ethical behavior, that seem to me to be wisdom based. Wisdom, after all, is the province of those of us in the third stage of life. We have seem much, and our voices offer much perspective.
Hope you enjoy reading the posts in this category.
To say I was a little bit apprehensive might be an understatement. The source of my fear wasn’t simply all that water, but something else.
Crossing the Seven Mile Bridge with a Range of Emotion Read More »
This is the attraction we came to Key West to see, the Hemingway Museum, Key West. This is a two story bungalow on high ground in the middle of the island. It was the family home of Hem and Pauline Pfeiffer, the woman who stole him from Hadley, and their two sons. Bad Pauline I
Looking for the Writer Within the Life: Hemingway Museum Key West Read More »
If you are planning to visit Hemingway bars where he drank when he lived on Key West, Florida, you have two stops to make. First To Captain Tony’s Captain Tony’s Saloon in Key West is a dark hole with tables, a guitarist, a bar tender and a gnarled tree pushing up through the ceiling like
Key West Bars Hold Fast to Hemingway’s Memory Read More »
The mystery, the Hemingway mystique, has been with me since I was an undergraduate. Hemingway framed himself as the hero-writer of his era. The pose reminds me of the mystery of the Greek hero-god Think about melancholy Achilles, whose diffident greatness was captured brilliantly by Brad Pitt in the 2000 movie Helen of Troy. (movie
Driving from Texas to Key West to Chase the Hemingway Mystique Read More »
