In my first class as a PhD student, the professor asked “Can we dispense with the word meaning?” I spent seven years as a doctoral student searching for ways to dispense with meaning. Now that I have reentered the world of my own thoughts I have decided to reclaim this word and find meaning in meaning. This blog is the space for me to explore the various ways I find myself (and the rest of the world) confronted with what things mean, with how to make things mean, and with what meaning means. Perhaps, dear reader, you will decide that meaning as it is portrayed here can be dispensed with and I wish you well on your quest. However, I hope you will be patient with my musings as I work out the meaning of things and that we can make meaning together.
Thank you for visiting this space.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
Rumi
I live my life in widening circles
Rainer Maria Rilke
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Would you judge me a fool if I said my love
Yamini Pathak
is a parched well that never quits reaching for the aquifer?
A Renaissance of Meaning 