Category: Reflections

After the Vacation

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

After the vacation comes
the brain fog,
the arduous task to reaccept the status quo,
and the quicksand that gradually swallows you
back into the routine you escaped from.

Even though you’ve come back (refreshed) to conquer,
You’re procrastinating still, snoozing, postponing
the great battle.
The warrior’s armor waits for you in the closet.
Your heart still hasn’t synchronized with
the rhythm of the hammer striking the anvil.

But you must get up anyway.
So, you get up now.
You get out of bed.

There’s work to be done.

A cold shower,
then coffee.

You wear your armor.

The sun rises to meet a clear, blue sky
that appears to have never met dark, grey clouds.
But you remember the winter storms.
You remember every war you’ve won.

If God wills it,
you will win this one, too.

And when you’re done,
the boulder will rest on the top of the hill,
and it will never roll back down.


February 18, 2024: Another Hangover

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Another hangover on a sunny Sunday.
I wake up dead
and crawl out of bed, crawl
to the nearest water source,
a fountain of life,
and drink like a man who was just saved
from hell.

In hell, there’s no water,
but there are fountains you can drink from,
fountains of spirits that do not quench your thirst,
but dehydrate you instead
and dry up every stream of thought that once flowed
in your head.

February 17, 2024: Practicing Philosophy

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Practicing philosophy is neither about the question nor the answer. It’s about experiencing a question that strives for an answer using you — your mind, your spirit. We can even say the following: Practicing philosophy is about forming and attempting to answer a question that is unresolvable. (Everything that falls outside of this, no longer belongs to the practice of philosophy; it belongs to science. Although, it is also important to note that all knowledge, including science and religion, belongs to philosophy.)

A philosopher needs a good amount of observable truths or facts to generate hypotheses as well as theories. But he doesn’t need to generate truths or facts.

A philosophy is always personal. A philosophy — if it really is a philosophy — can only disguise itself as being impersonal. When someone reads your philosophical text, a part of you replaces a part of him. He becomes a little more like you — a little more like your philosophy. You transfer (duplicate) a part of you into the other. We can call this the reproduction of ideas because it is how they survive, evolve, etc.

Reading philosophy is a lot like eating. Your mind will digest what it can (or needs to) digest. The rest will turn into philosophical fat or feces. Coming back to a philosophical text is a repetition that teaches you something new. It changes you differently. Rereading a philosophical work is not the same as relearning the same thing. You cannot relearn. You can only learn new things through repetition.

Philosophy is the love of wisdom, not wisdom. Loving something is different than being something. If you love a woman, you are the lover of the woman. You do not become the woman by loving her.

Philosophizing is not something you do to get somewhere. Philosophizing is something you do when you get somewhere. It is the child of boredom; and therefore, it is a leisure activity. In fact, this is what I’ve been doing for the last 30 minutes or so…