There May Be Chaos Still Around the World, poem by George Santayana

THERE MAY BE CHAOS STILL AROUND THE WORLD
by George Santayana

There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.

PHOTO: “Summer Snowflake” by David Forester. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: George Santayana (1863-1952) was a Spanish-born American philosopher who is regarded as one of the most important thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century. He was also a critic, dramatist, educator, essayist, novelist, and poet. Critics rank his philosophical work with that of John Dewey, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James.   After graduating from Harvard University in 1886, he continued his education in England and Germany, spending two years at a fellowship at the University of Berlin. He returned to Harvard in 1889 to complete his Ph.D. He began teaching philosophy at Harvard in 1889, and influenced students who would go on to very successful careers, including Van Wyck Brooks, T. S. Eliot, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Frost, Walter Lippman, and Gertrude Stein. He wrote most of his published works during his twenty-three year tenure on the Harvard faculty.

But Where’s the Cat, story by Philip K. Dick

BUT WHERE’S THE CAT?

by Philip K. Dick

“But let me tell you my cat joke. It’s very short and simple. A hostess is giving a dinner party and she’s got a lovely five-pound T-bone steak sitting on the sideboard in the kitchen waiting to be cooked while she chats with the guests in the living room — has a few drinks and whatnot. But then she excuses herself to go into the kitchen to cook the steak-and it’s gone. And there’s the family cat, in the corner, sedately washing its face.”

“The cat got the steak,” Barney said.

“Did it? The guests are called in; they argue about it. The steak is gone, all five pounds of it; there sits the cat, looking well-fed and cheerful. ‘Weigh the cat,’ someone says. They’ve had a few drinks; it looks like a good idea. So they go into the bathroom and weigh the cat on the scales. It reads exactly five pounds. They all perceive this reading and a guest says, ‘okay, that’s it. There’s the steak.’

They’re satisfied that they know what happened, now; they’ve got empirical proof. Then a qualm comes to one of them and he says, puzzled, ‘But where’s the cat?”’

SOURCE: Excerpted from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by Philip K. Dick.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. He is most well known for his short story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep,” made into the film Blade Runner. He died in 1982, shortly before the film was released. Dick was a prolific writer with forty-four novels and over one hundred short stories to his credit. Other film adaptations of his work include Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, and The Adjustment Bureau.

PHOTO: Philip K. Dick and feline friend.

The sublime, quote by Immanuel Kant

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt” IMMANUEL KANT, A Critique of Pure Reason

Photo: “Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1942″ by Ansel Adams

Sublime Messages, quote by Socrates

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you would find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.” SOCRATES

Photo:  Alice PopKorn

The sublime is limitless, quote by Immanuel Kant, photo by Ansel Adams

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt” IMMANUEL KANT, A Critique of Pure Reason

Photo: “Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1942″ by Ansel Adams

Sublime Offerings, Quote by Immanuel Kant, Photo by Ansel Adams

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”

IMMANUEL KANT, A Critique of Pure Reason

Photo: “Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1942” by Ansel Adams

But Where’s the Cat?…by Philip K. Dick

“But let me tell you my cat joke. It’s very short and simple. A hostess is giving a dinner party and she’s got a lovely five-pound T-bone steak sitting on the sideboard in the kitchen waiting to be cooked while she chats with the guests in the living room — has a few drinks and whatnot. But then she excuses herself to go into the kitchen to cook the steak-and it’s gone. And there’s the family cat, in the corner, sedately washing its face.”

“The cat got the steak,” Barney said.

“Did it? The guests are called in; they argue about it. The steak is gone, all five pounds of it; there sits the cat, looking well-fed and cheerful. ‘Weigh the cat,’ someone says. They’ve had a few drinks; it looks like a good idea. So they go into the bathroom and weigh the cat on the scales. It reads exactly five pounds. They all perceive this reading and a guest says, ‘okay, that’s it. There’s the steak.’

They’re satisfied that they know what happened, now; they’ve got empirical proof. Then a qualm comes to one of them and he says, puzzled, ‘But where’s the cat?”’

From The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by PHILIP K. DICK

Photo: Philip K. Dick and feline friend.