Fun Facts from Zach's Almanac: Ah, summer.

The summer months are probably the hardest for sitting down to espouse in writing, moments of personal illumination.
Equally inhibiting is the knowing that many of ones min-epiphanies are often glaringly self evident to pretty much anyone that might happen by the site here and read them.
It's hard out here for a pseudo-philosopher!
But I've been back to this site now several times over the course of summer and to be honest with all of you…yeah, the picture of the dead guy is a downer and has got to go!
With this in mind and still coming up short on having any great observations or revelations to cover these walls with, I thought I'd share a small koan here with you.
If you're not familiar with the term, a "koan" is generally a short question or riddle, illustrating a ponderence in the shape of a "catch 22" that one can use to "step out of the box" every now and again whenever your immediate situation calls for you to change your perspective.
And then, guess what. You find it sticking to the inside of your head, repeating itself when you least expect it, like a tacky little pop song from the days of AM radio.
Probably the most well known koan is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
This one in particular slays me.

The quotes above are a bit different and not quite as brief. But a favorite koan of mine and not an all too terrible piece of advice on how we go about processing our observations on the world around ourselves.
I fell upon the first half of it in an early chapter of a book by a madman I've been re-reading this summer. I'm re-reading it specifically because I suspected there was more to it than just the story line and more than I was capable of understanding ten or 12 years ago. I was right.
The second half of this koan comes from a conversation in a chapter much further on in the book. But it occurred to me that bringing them together was a possibility and perhaps just what was intended all along by the author.
I'll be back later. Hope you make it back here sometime too.
(And should you be one of those people who actually miss the picture of the dead guy, you can still find him below.)