Tuesdays with Nobelji, days of leisure, and the Holy Grail

Happy Moon Day, folks! As you are reading this, you must no doubt be taking a well-deserved break from your Ashtangic labors, doing whatever it is that you do on rest days such as this. I actually did not take a complete break from practice this morning; when I woke up this morning, I was feeling so tight and stiff that I felt that I had to do a few Suryas in order to get through the day. And I did. Perhaps this is a sign that the practice has somehow "hardwired" itself into my system, so that I can't start my day without it. Or maybe this is a sign of not being able to foster non-attachment from the practice; I don't know, whatever works, I guess. These days, I'm starting to think that all this emphasis on non-attachment is really a bit overrated, anyway.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my rate of blogging over the last month has been averaging at around one a week. What's even more interesting is that these once-a-week posts tend to fall on a Tuesday. Makes me wonder if I shouldn't perhaps rename this blog Tuesdays with Nobelji (as in Tuesdays with Timji). But then, of course, I have nowhere near the presence of Tim Miller, so this is probably just me and my grandiosity speaking.

In other news: My days of leisure, of playing online chess and watching seemingly endless seasons of Battlestar Galactica on Netflix, are about to come to an end. The new academic year here in Idaho will begin next week--oh, I guess I never mentioned on this blog that I have been offered a teaching position here at Idaho for another year. Apparently, the good people here have decided that I am not halfway bad as a teacher of philosophy, and have decided to use the services of this itinerant teacher-scholar for another year. Which gives me another year of gainful employment while I continue my quest for that Holy Grail of academia, a.k.a. the tenure-track position. Oh, and speaking of Holy Grail, let's have a quick look at this little clip from what one of my colleagues has termed the Greatest Creation of the Human Mind:

Watching this clip makes me wonder about the state of the blogosphere. I wonder if the blogosphere is also a sort of anarcho-syndicalist commune, minus the voting by two-thirds majority.

But anyway, I see that I have digressed majorly. As I was saying, my days of leisure are coming to an end. Which is just as well. It may well be in the order of things that a good man (or woman) must put the resources from which his prosperity arises to good works, if he or she is to remain in good standing with whoever or whatever is running the universe. This brings to mind these words of Kant: "so paramount is the value of a good will, that it ought not to escape without notice, that an impartial spectator cannot be expected to share any emotion of delight from contemplating the uninterrupted prosperity of a being whom no trait of a good will adorns." (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals)

So it shall be. But in the meantime, I see that this post has been about everything and nothing at the same time. Maybe I shall have something more substantial to say in the next post, whenever that might come (next Tuesday?). In the meantime, enjoy whatever is left of the summer.