Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

You are here

Blogs

meager slices of reality

Anne Dalke's picture

A number of years ago, when we were traveling in Spain, we were struck to find, in the main piazza in Madrid, what seemed to us a kind of stand-off between the cathedral and the palace: it looked to us like two heavy power-hitters facing off across an open space. In Antigua we see the remnants of this arrangement: on one side of Parque Centrale are the ruins of the Cathedral, on another the Palacio Capitanes (which now houses the tourist bureau).

“Carbonized reality” and "hallucinating vegetables"

Anne Dalke's picture
This weekend, Jeff and I took a jaunt to Atitlan, and had our breath taken away by “the most beautiful lake in the world.” We also had our brains twisted around by the realization that
  • the archeologists who have excavated pottery from the lake bottom have turned up a series of the most surreal, laugh-out-loud items (see right and below...)
  • this tremendous lake was formed by a huge volcanic eruption 85,000 years ago, one that sent ash as far away as Florida; and

The times, they are a-changing...

Anne Dalke's picture
I have all my life been subject to strong mood swings: from the happiness & hopefulness that besets me most mornings, to an often not-so-much later crash into sadness & hopelessness….

So it’s been quite an experience for me to find myself living in a country where the weather is as changeable as my moods. Most mornings here in the highlands of Guatemala are gloriously clear and sunny, full of flowers, birdsong, possibility…

Under the Volcano

Anne Dalke's picture
Shaye commented that "the mind has to be let go of. Words and thinking will never get to truth. Expansion of mind and expansion of consciousness are not the same thing." Could you say more about that...that mind is much more than consciousness, you mean, and that to get anywhere--really anywhere--we (I mean I!) have to stop thinking so much....?