Is love altruistic or desire based?  Is it an intangible resonance between souls independent of their volition or a negotiated deal based on expectations and hoped for profit?  Is it explicable or undefinable?

Do we love the divine or fear him, her, them or it?  Does the divine love us or fear us?  Does the divine even exist and, if so, did we create him, her, them or it?

Is valor undervalued, overrated or misunderstood?  Just what is perception and is it a mirror based, projective phenomenon or does it involve at least a trace of truth?  And what is truth anyway other than something that is seemingly slipping away?

Is sanity a valid norm, a valid goal or none of the above?

Why does writing something pithy make the author feel so well even if it’s probable no one else will ever read it; and just what is pithy anyway and why does it rhyme with prissy (or even with something of a more urinary basis)?

All worthy questions without adequate answers, sort of like speculations about what follows for us after our term on the mortal plane is completed.  And what is the mortal plane anyway and why does it rhyme with plain and pain?

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, geopolitical commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.