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...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 28, 20202 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...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 26, 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...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 25, 20202 min read
STOIC POETRY | Life at the atomic level
I expect my consciousness is a connect-the-dots affair; a consequence of some trillions of atoms gathered and enlivened through the...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 23, 20202 min read
STOIC POETRY | Walking the shore with seashells in my hand
I have such a small and precious set of values - objectives and principles to guide my life. So very few. Each one is precious to me, as...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 20, 20202 min read
STOIC POETRY | Arguing with myself over free will
How best might I prove myself wrong? I have this suspicion, not quite yet a belief perhaps, that free will is an illusion. How can I...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 18, 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...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 17, 20203 min read
STOIC POETRY | The grounding of goodness
It is said that good actions are their own reward; bearing an immediate and lasting fruit of nearly tangible well-being unto at least the...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 15, 20201 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...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 13, 20203 min read
STOIC POETRY | The pain of the empty nest
Who knew becoming empty-nesters was so painful? Surely, neither Yumiko or I did. And who knew how fast the sense of absence and loss...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 8, 20202 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...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 7, 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...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 6, 20203 min read
STOIC POETRY | My retirement mission
Next week, our daughter Emily will leave us. As a family, on Saturday, July 11th, we will spend a day moving her few things to an...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 5, 20202 min read
STOIC POETRY | A time for philosophy
It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he may live in all respects so...
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Kurt Bell
Jul 2, 20201 min read
STOIC POETRY | Best by date
I think our expiration date is roughly our fiftieth birthday. What I mean, is that if we have not yet observed and said anything original...
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Kurt Bell
Jun 16, 20201 min read
STOIC POETRY | Emily is making art for my book
My daughter has begun to produce art for my book Going Alone. She came with me to the desert recently to experience firsthand the...
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Kurt Bell
May 12, 20201 min read
STOIC POETRY | A visitor at the Siberia Writing Bridge
While at Siberia this past weekend I discovered I'd had a visitor. Someone had actually come, and had made their way from the ghost town...
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Kurt Bell
May 2, 20201 min read
STOIC POETRY | Editing the new book
Work on the new book is progressing slower now, since the arrival of COVID-19 and the shutdown of so much of our society's day-to-day...
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Kurt Bell
Oct 28, 20193 min read
STOIC POETRY | Old voices command small audience
October 28, 2019 Dear Eric, When we are young there are many who hear; though as we age there seem fewer to listen. There is something...
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Kurt Bell
Oct 19, 20193 min read
STOIC POETRY | A plan of life and death
October 19, 2019 Dear Eric, I write these words now almost twenty years to the day since I completed my story of you and Joe-Bob, sharing...
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