Your Atlas and You (the cover guide)

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Your Atlas and You

I am ben yosaf aperitif, your atlas, that will help you navigate your way all around the earth.

One of my hopes is that you memorize the North Star.  This will make it easier to navigate the wavy seas in night-time and will often be your ship's guide in troubled waters of calamitous and troubled tides.

Do not take your eyes off what is ahead of you.  There is a lot you have to give and there is much coming your way.  Stay focused on having a light-heart that is optimistic and headstrong as you feel the beautiful air of the spotlight, Mother Earth, surround you.

The light of the sun shines in day and the stars and moon fill the night-air.  Therefore, you are never alone and you always have white pigments toward which you can turn.

We are together, here, and I have to tell you now, before you start your adventure, exploring and discovering and finding greatness anew, that you are a unique and wonderful person in your best moments and your best array of doing those dance moves.  You are a good dancer.

Here's to dancing, to family, and to friends.

...

You have an awesome world to explore and you will make it out alive.  You will carry with you, during your best days, great glory.

Hold onto treasures or pass them along to those you love.

In dolphin jumps, feel the sea meet the land.

In elephant tusks, surmise years beyond wisdom.

In this present day, we inherit the ancient times.

From the Eastern paths of spiraling paths of a rotational center, inherit the sunrise.

- ben yosaf aperitif

"educational and authorial authority"

by ben yosaf aperitif (birth-name: Benjamin James Bussewitz)

September 16, 2025

I am grateful for you to enjoy the scholarly works I have labored so tediously, meticulously, arduously, and zealously and with much noble sentiment and happy joyousness on, to bring about more happiness, goodness, and love, to this great beautiful planet of ours, Our Home, Mother Earth, where we all sing along to our favorite songs, in the choruses of life and in the epicenters of glory, epiphanies, and momentous feelings, the mountainous heights from where we shine our light from time in to time again to time begins to time from beginning to end to times with your good friends.

Please enjoy my good writing. Specifically, to enlarge your insights and knowledge of the author, I invite the reader to direct herself or himself to "a pithy statement of the artist with no pen."

And to contact my references for details about publishing rights, see my Curriculum Vitae.

- ben yosaf aperitif

𝄞

ben aperitif has been grateful for the people he has met, for the people he has studied with, and for music.

He has been grateful for these things as they have come upon him, for the whole duration of his good and kind life.

- ben yosaf aperitif

𝄞

27 October 2025.

athens, greece.

Life is distinct. The ones we are, complete. Replete!

- ben yosaf aperitif

𝄞

I have seen the number one mountain-top view.

Beyond, in its curvy fashion, the curve of the earth.

(We stare off, into space, my companion and I, in our doze of ascension, unto the highest high, and see where the earth and the heavens ignite, upon the peak of Everest.)

Asks me, in her number one crescendo, "Who do you be?"

"I am who I am. I am the best philosopher since Socrates."

She, agape in murmuring words and tiny ways, the green beauty of tea, her and me:

"Where do you head, as we walk toward the clay's page?"

"In your beautiful refrain and the aura of our distance-contemplating journey proceeding today's right off the novel days."

She says I am her sunshine dance.

As I envelop in creation of beauty.

- ben yosaf aperitif

𝄞

ben yosaf aperitif studied from 2008-2011 at the good small liberal arts college, Allegheny, in especial concerted good-effort in disciplines of English & philosophy.

In his senior year, he directed his cognizance to the newly founded field of distinction in philosophy of Embodied Neuroscience, in which he directed his advanced thought in literary Continental and ethically directed Pragmatism to the complexity of meaningfulness, importance, and greatness of the colorful and beautiful lifeworld.

Notably, aperitif is on a prolonged project advancing ideas in the topic of nationalism, specifically, what constitutes the nation-state and how it works functionally and well-illuminated.

- ben yosaf aperitif

𝄞

the vocation he has found in his looking is that he is a philosophic aesthetician, a good poet.

- ben yosaf aperitif

ben yosaf aperitif is published in the poetry of Mediterranean Poetry, The Allegheny Review, Pegasus, and Poems.  He has delivered papers at the Global Citizenship Conference and Duquesne Philosophy Conference.

ben yosaf aperitif' curriculum vitae

post written by ben yosaf aperitif

The Questions of English Literature Sow the Seed in the Word

"The Questions of English Literature Sow the Seed in the Word"

by ben yosaf aperitif

In my interpretive engagement and close reads of English literature, I carry to the end of the line the logic of the questions raised in great literature, pondering deeper understandings of those mysteries of human action and contemplation;

In my deep study throughout the world history of the central question regarding meaning and the other big questions that philosophy aims to uncover answers in its pondering and illumination of which it raises responses and offers understandings of truth in light of-- in this disciplinary and arduous study I discover the truths that I seek, the truths to those questions that great English literature unlocks in us and shines light regarding the great complexity and puzzling nature of experience, for instance, through our contemplation of the exposition, description, conflict, and actions by which the author provides enjoyment through his creation of the artwork he places in the world that we take up and engage with in our suspense of disbelief bringing about our delight in its beauty and shining light toward our ethical framework, as Tolstoy comments the greatest artwork does best, which he also asserts is Christian in nature, the artwork placed before us in our lifeworld in which we observe and analyze the author's literary techniques in character development and by our bright and smart responses of such we view meaningful truths and come to meaningful frameworks to carry out systemic modes of inquiring regarding the meaning of and attunement to the universality of the human condition, shining even greater truths by raising its great questions which we engage with through philosophical discourse, meaning, and truth to find more of our answers.  I have found a lot of answers and seen much in sharp perception of that which constitutes 'the good life,' the life one can be sure of, the life one can be happy about and live in happiness and fulfillment in, through this interchange through which English literature views world philosophy and vice versa;

In my carrying out of this deep interlocution of questions and the truths we come to and the answers we find that I have characterized in the intersection of English literature and world philosophy, I continually probe and engage by the 'truths,' in every sense of the word, that are shown, provided a framework by which in deep probing of the full picture of reality (reality being 'everything,' in every sense of the word), in which I come to the appreciation, understanding, and lived framework that responds in my condition as someone who carries out through my lived actions the Stewardship of He who is Being, the truths that are taught in the high-mindedness and noble disciplinary framework by which theology provides us with meaning of and its canonical understanding in its entreaty to good action through the true conviction in such infinite ways to live in light of that central lived experience of humankind in remarks and the likeness of humankind has enacted its greatest, most enduring, and created its most beautiful works of art.  Through the great deepness into my understanding I see lived experience and the human family's shared framework by which it is unfolding in time and space and in its endurance and perseverance limitations and greatness as called to the human condition, I can see through this a greater and greater personhood in the one true God that theology shed lights regarding the character, attributes, will, ways, and hand of action on our Awesome Earth.

Then, in light of the vivacious, wonderful complimentary culture and customs Eastern ways show, in my time mostly in the Western world, I engage this wholeness of understanding in the intuitive, reverence that is taught in ancient unto the contemporary time in Eastern thought, and in this divine state, I travel all the world's oceans and lands.

- ben yosaf aperitif

Stately Bestrewn (a poem)

Stately Bestrewn

 
I am so happy,
For my wonderful stately sum,
I am so happy,
For the beautiful way of jazz,
I am so happy,
I have the airfare,
To fly across the ocean,
Across to the wildest continent of strangers,
Australia, with the hop and the skip,
From here to there to beyond the circus-sun,
Flying forth, where we soar on the run.
 
 
 
by ben yosaf aperitif

The Ways of Being in the Lens of Belonging (a philosophy artwork)

The Ways of Being in the Lens of Belonging

by ben yosaf aperitif

genre: Phenomenology and Embodied Pragmatism

The mind is a beautiful place in which we see through the world and utilize in our understanding and all the exchanges in the places of our people, the trees we drive by with them and the fields we walk through. The way in which we use it is we think. Even the images we see, the sensorimotor neurons that extend outward and upon the outer peripheries of our two ocular faculties point out and, in our mind, share with us what is surrounding, in the surround of the light of our refrains and our stereo sounds. We enjoy these things. Some of them may be difficult. But our mind is the way we change shape of the hard times, we can even make the hard times pristine! We are great creatures of our beautiful minds in which we have belonging and our understandings and compartmentalizations of the world.

This is great! We think and we think for good purpose and purposes! It helps us. It helps us good. And it helps us understand. And see things in ways that are understood. It is how we understand things and sense them and are aware and have awareness, our minds, and it helps us with our foots, our two feet of walking while we stroll forward in the fields of grain, our two arms poised strong and happy in our strong and happy frame, we walk with people while we think about what we are talking of, speaking of our mind, the ways the world is working, while we think about them, their part in the conversation, the ways the world works, and how happy we are being understood. We stand together at the end of the field and feel especially proud. We think about the way we feel great and happy that we are together, not feeling anything but a little nonchalance and serendipitous glad that we know each other and to each other make good sense, just sharing in less talking, more quiet, the quiet going loud in our heads: in which we think, wow, we feel good about this neighbor of ours, the way we are understood, the way the talking and sharing of ours songs is feeling good, the way the beautiful light is bending in, through our eyes and into the sense, the light of the sun, we won’t stare straight in, but it’s especially bright in this moment, and we suddenly become aware of the central and notable personal deity of the world, the universe he rules and how he is greatly understood by us, how we are making us proud especially in each other, and as we make sense of this, the whole thing, and suddenly are confronted by our lives, our each and every thought (having all our understandings, having all our sensory perceptions, having all our communicative establishments, happiness, that have misunderstandings, moments of catharsis, liminal windows, and liminal cherishes, thoughts that have made us beautiful and all the thoughts of those in which all have decided our actions); we are confronted by our lives, and we see we understand who we are, we see who we are good, we see who we are well, and we see we are good. This figurative process, it sometimes happens to all of us.

Well, this is good, that we have minds that can do so much good work. This is good, that we have minds that our so much beautiful and in which we share the world with God. This is so good that we have these minds that are centrally understood.

A Way of Writing in Sand (a philosophy artwork)

A Way of Writing in Sand

by ben yosaf aperitif

People search, wonder, stumble upon, discover, and sometimes it comes true. Love, meaning, and truth to all that they inquire upon and see in terms of that which is loving meaningful, and true. Beyond the river blue. Open horizons in any direction everywhere-wide and narrow and straight, right on through; and then they shout from above the mountaintop sunrise, within the light of their pretty blue or green or sunflower jasper hazel eyes, thank goodness for the azure blue brimming with sediments-of-the-cascading pink and rose-unto-silver violet and Mozart-royal and Beethoven-cue, right on cue. And as they shine out their colors, all the colors spin and then they slant and fall down in every direction. Wherever they go, the light is shining. It shines right on through. It shines in every direction. It shines in every color too. In all there is, there is white light, grey, and sequin, shouting out and brimming, sequoias of life and liturgy turning forth in time and vibing with the bright vibrant vibrations of all they are and want to be for their best wishes, hopes, and dreams.

That is to say: when one looks at life a certain way, in cylindrical retrospect, in the hope they turn forth unto their sequences of transpiring events, from the beginning of their life unto where they stand, with their hope that is as great as Luther Jr. looking beyond the mountaintops, beyond the rooftops of the sky, as diligent and heartfelt as Malcolm’s by-any-means’ categories of flavor in the blue-cloud-nimbus, as far forward as the entreaties of the building-block civilizational hills, beyond all categories, in the wholeness of sound and color and taste and touch, as it fills up the life of, as Gandhi wisely puts it, the children of God, and as I extend that metaphor, the children of God, or, the people of the third planet away from the sun, when looking within to the life surrounds, and the whishing-and-whispering wind and moments, one can see, as she or he reflects in the pleasant calmness of introspection with one’s clear pretty blue or green or sunflower jasper eyes, the way of one’s life is that she or he is, in the core of who the person is, all their central momentum of all the person has understood forever— that she or he is aiming to carry out goodness in terms of objective truth, meaning, and love, and they are carrying that out selflessly, even at moments that might trip them up, even at moments in which they get a little out of hand, get a little tongue-in-cheek, lose her or his best interest, the individual is momentarily found in the home of wanting to be good in some way or some other, and this is well-understood. Aristotle, a man who lived before I was even a kid— he incisively stated that happiness and the good are that for which all interactions, decisions, and thoughts of humankind are aimed. People aim to do good things, whether it is directly or indirectly, laden with goodness or benign, whether laughing to the bank or chasing their way in rhymes.

In other words: the way in which all things are well-understood is in the all-knowing eye of truth. The Sphinx has that. I do too. So can you! And you can for song and dance, or whatever floats the bubble to the water well-fed in the kindly fragrant, gladly esteemed color of you.

The Quest For A Happy Life (a philosophy artwork)

The Quest For A Happy Life

by ben yosaf aperitif

 

 

 

Where do we go to find happiness?  Is there a happiness-depot, or a happiness-factory, or a happiness-shop?

If we could reach out or go to a certain tangible place, and then be happy, how much would that be worth our time?

Ω

Yet, happiness comes from inner-searching and inner-strength and inner-aspirational-aims.

We come to happiness in our lives, and the journey to obtain it is hard and there is obstacles and hardships on the way there to conquer and overcome.

Ω

Two of the central questions we need to tackle to achieve a truly happy life is— what is the purpose of life and what is the meaning of life.

Purpose is an action-oriented understanding.

Meaning is a descriptive enterprise.

Ω

Without having a clear life-purpose and a clear life-meaning, happiness eludes us

On the contrary, for those of us with good grip and harnessing in terms of the purpose of our life and with crystalline-vision regarding the meaning of our life, happiness is in our hands as we continue on our walk through the paths of life.

Ω Ω

When one obtains a life full of purpose and meaningfulness, one ascends to the heights of true happiness and true fulfillment; when the inputs of purpose and meaningfulness are made indelible, permanent, and staunch— she has arrived at true and lasting fulfillment.

∞

We achieve purpose in intentional, important endeavors and strivings we take up.  By aiming to accomplish feats and make forward progress in imperative areas of importance, the centrality of good living is underscored.  We do not feel is though we have purpose or purposeful action in petty deeds.  When we prioritize paramount and deep-seated good action, this is when we see we have a purpose-driven life.

What is the meaning, without an area invested in purpose-driven life?  Are we to waste our time in disarray and needless iotas, we do not feel as though our life is structured in good resolution and colorful arrays of pigments.  Though, when we push forth to carry out good deeds that are loving and compassionate, selfless and heartfelt, noble and thoughtfully-provoking— it is in this time when we feel we are living lives that are structured on an edifice of purpose and importance.

And, because we can reel into this noble endeavored life, we have a good sense of meaning.  Our time is well-used.  Our time is good in all that it is worth, because we achieve beautiful and loving accomplishments, feats, achievements, efforts, and aims (Luke 6:20-23).

∞

This is the beginning of being of true happiness and true fulfillment— to use one’s life in terms of integral purposive results and to bask in the meaning derivative of such.  As we aim to carry out good actions, we can find beautiful ways of being well-off in our good life.  We can feel as though we are doing well in what we strive for, because it is good and important, noble and righteous.  We can aim for good things and feel as though we are living a life that is on the perfect track for us, roundabouts the best we can do and with optimistic outlook and good gears forward.

With a life where you can see what you are up to truly matters and truly resounds in goodness, one can have a true sense of happiness and fulfillment.

Things make you happy and make you feel good and make you feel, at times, ebullient, at other times glad and full of cheer— because you are living a life that is purpose-driven, meaningful, and focused on things of import and excellence.

We can feel inflated with gladness and joy, when we have purpose-driven lives, that we characterize as true happiness, which reflects the loving and righteous kinds of paths we take.

We can feel wholesome and great in who we are when we focus on what we are doing with great accent and intent to find ourselves living lives that make us proud and glorious for our hard-efforts and triumphs, that we characterize as true fulfillment.

We can navigate to a life-security and a life-trajectory that (though there are bumps, pitfalls and obstacles that may befall our path) makes us ensured that we will carry on living this greatness of life.  This brings about true and lasting fulfillment.

∞

We meander and mosey along through life and encounter falling upon a promise of a happy and peaceful afterlife in union with God.  How transient and arbitrary would our time on earth belong, if we were not able to look back at it with good eyesight and in a proud state for our good accomplishments and our good virtue?  In our life, we can be good people with integrity doing good deeds and good endeavors and projects that defines us in great esteem, virtue, and success.  We are here with all our neighbors that share with us this beautiful planet, our friends who share our time and stories and efforts with, and our family who is close to us and there with us all the way.  We have endless potential and endless freedom.