THE LAST POTENTIAL

beauty may fade ... it will ... goodness may follow ... surely ... what still abides but the truth ... beatrice is old ugly bitter and spiteful but I know at least that's the truth and she might too ... alfonse has lost his mind is bedridden ... for all we know completely without a thought ... the tragedy is not that he's free of the truth but that he's held to it of necessity ... all the truth requires is one thought of one reality to which it must conform ... and all the other truths are a sense of the implications of this first grand basic truth ... a sense of it towards it forever ... frustrated combative wistful all thoughts return to that first thought ... exitus ah I remember reditus ... there's always that truth there's always though delayed that return and the closer that it gets the brighter it becomes the more complete the fuller the better the more beautiful it grows ... all because into the hollow waste of empty space someone spoke the truth and even out there it was heard felt sensed thought as in a dream ... when hard reality has come to that last potency ... as if ... and hearing a metaphor it turns

RAISON D'ETRE

if the next world is so superior to this one why are we still so attracted to this ... you might see it in energetic people ... healthy people live well in this world and energy comes from good health which is an excuse sufficient in itself for enjoying life ... so perhaps what I mean to say is how the pathology of the attraction interests me now ... especially over a long life span when more and more unpleasantness is likely to be encountered ... more and more enervating unsolved dilemmas ... why then this muted but powerful attraction to life on this earth when it's such a paltry thing compared to what must follow ... it's tempting to smile at this human as well as inhuman incongruity and let it go at that ... but that would be perhaps to give up too soon ... is there perhaps a sense in which this life is not inferior and not paltry in comparison with its consequent ... a reason to live worthy of a better life to follow ... down to the last twisted drop of poison wrung from the broken heart of ruined nature ... your nature flat on its back under the network of tubes your thumb up to signify the reason ... struggle ... still struggle ... to hold on to truth

NO PLACE TO LAY HIS HEAD

may he not play a game even to the gender of the pronoun we use to describe him ... or the voice he uses to tell us his say ... sometimes another's sometimes our own ... but never once does he tell who he is ... at least never to me ... perhaps to you ... or perhaps together we belong to a befogged generation with grimy balls of cotton in our ears since we were children and never took them out not even to wash them once ... a world of particulars we say that's all that has what we give it ... call it existential import ... no universals only a world of particulars ... a hot shower but no warmth ... a smile a nudge but no affection ... ah groping in the dark and squeezing and something soft and something firm to hold but no love ... what a silly thing these abstract universals are ... who needs knowledge when I simply know what to do ... or community or power or glory when I can pause my program to go fix a drink and come back and pick it up where I left off ... and most of all who has the time or need to pray ... have we no safety net no medical no drugs or what do we pay taxes for ... detail by detail we're supposed to connect the dots ... what wonder then we have no visits supernal or divine when the dots together make a blank

TAKING TRUE STOCK

when are you unhappy ... when you're out of sync ... when are you out of sync ... when you're out of touch with a significant part of reality ... when does that happen ... when you're caught up in a meaningless part of your self ... when you have your pieces where they belong but your next move threatens to throw you out of whack you are in danger of being unhappy ... when the pieces are external you may be able to make a strategic withdrawal ... but when they're internal there is no retreat because you're already home and you're invaded ... what you risk in this second more serious case is the integrity of your soul ... or to put it another way you risk your own disintegration ... it would appear to be true therefore that telling the parts of the self the meaningless and the significant one from the other would in times of danger be essential ... but why would we wait until then ... we should consider the danger before we meet it ... or better yet consider the triumphant balance and how to sustain it ... consider the glory of the self its body its memory its reason and its enthusiasm and count the parts that count

WRATH RATHER THAN RAGE

anger is nothing if it doesn't want to hate ... if it doesn't want to kill ... and if it weren't a sloppy emotional thing you could see a case or two where it might be right ... I know of one case and you probably know it too where it must have been right ... in that case it must have been an anger purified of that sloppy emotion and filled instead with a purified passion ... indeed just days from all the world's purest passion ... popper said 1900 years later kill the idea not the opponent who thinks it right ... that's what we call civilization ... but those same 1900 years before popper such a passion for truth had a better name and by far ... not historical or political or cultural ... not psychological ... not philosophical ... higher even than metaphysical ... higher only because theological ... a theological name for a theological virtue ... some say the only such to finally survive ... love of your neighbor by way of love of god and god's will ... there then in that virtue in that truth confronted by pain piss and pus the anger would be to kill ... to kill all such evil

PURGATORY

look how much though dangerous it pays to suppose purgatory ... as an hypothesis its power to explain things is fruitful ... why this fascination with characters in history rather than in fiction ... you are preparing for your conversation with them in purgatory ... what answer to give those who call heaven pie in the sky ... purgatory ... to those who say this earth is hell ... purgatory as the way to heaven ... what do you say to those who tremble before time that vaporous but inexorable tyrant ... you say yes vaporous it's just begun to expand just waking up yawning and stretching still to get out of bed and swing its legs down to the floor and take its first step into eternity ... into purgatory ... inexorable yes it has a point ... the arrow of time is meant to hit its target and it will ... the long overarching shot straight nonetheless to heaven ... or the straight bolt into the murky dark to light light and more light ... purgatory ... and surely we're most usually too straightforward on this one topic ... too stubborn ... to take the graceful arc straight to the source ... we mostly bend and stoop crouching toward purgatory

BETWEEN EVERYTHING AND NOTHING

she was upset by the square ... the square of opposition ... she did not like the company the qualifiers kept ... all and no she felt were an exclusive set but here must come a third this meddlesome troublesome some ... all if it had been allowed would have faced only no always simply clearly but for this pulling his sleeve down ... would without this interference have put his hand out perhaps and with the one fingertip signify to no that this point only is where they might touch ... here only they might agree ... and in that agreement put all the world in order ... or so she thought ... if it weren't for this noisome pesky some ... not just yes that is but all ... all the world inside when point comes to meet point ... the circle closes ... and only no graciously gracefully without ... but here's that some come hemming and hawing up to say yes to no and no to yes and sometimes to all and yes sometimes too to no ... somewhere rising almost to every place ... and sometimes even now saying so to never ... till this insignificant exception ... this third thing ... is now somehow eternal

CONTRADICTION TO ONE POINT

one of two creatures moved some figures on a map and pointed his laser-equipped finger at a screen on the wall ... the screen responded ... it said four ... he bent down and removed a figure from the map ... the other creature said don't touch my pieces ... I'll bury my own dead ... the first creature replied that's not realistic your army will be far from the battlefield by dark ... far in retreat ... there will be no one to care for your wounded much less to bury your dead ... the second creature pointed his fnger likewise laser-equipped at the forehead of the first ... a wind blew from the four corners of the room and settled like a cloud over his brow ... above his pointing finger ... the first creature smiled ... the second creature lowered his hand but fixed his opponent with one sidelong glance from one steady beady eye ... it seemed to flash in a personal immediate code ... you come here into my land ... you take my subjects and my predicates ... you leave me nothing ... wherever you are I cannot be ... yet we are no two extremes contrarywise both content to be false together ... it is simply this ... my I will be ... your all will not

MORE THAN PRINCIPLE

diversity makes us stronger ... democracy and equality should apply worldwide and till they do they certainly must be made to apply to everyone here within our borders citizen and alien alike ... for we are a nation of principles and these two above all others we mean to uphold ... unless we are mistaken in the definition of our terms ... which notion as a good liberal in thought and in logic I must now consider ... especially concerning the term nation ... is it in fact simply that which is ruled by its principles ... two of which no doubt should be equality and democracy ... there we should have little quibble or concern ... it's just that expression simply that which gives me pause ... it's a qualifier in the predicate that doesn't seem to do enough justice to the subject ... what is it after all being ruled so simply by these principles if by that we do not mean its people ... its citizens ... but do we mean to say of such a group of living feeling thinking creatures that they are simply ruled by principle when we know most of the time what a hard thing it is just to govern ourselves ... what mistakes what crimes and what heroic peradventure we the people share in our history

cf buchannan, state of emergency

SELF-DISCIPLINE

the virtuous thing about false anger is in the response it rightfully demands even though it's false ... for all things good and bad still must serve the truth in a straight way or crooked ... all things must return to truth to touch the hem of her robe and learn to read therein their own identity before they go out again to speak truly or to lie ... and all things must give to some things round them the chance to act correctly ... so it is when false anger hovering round us ... most thickly among the poorly disposed who have not acted correctly repeatedly in the past but now are given still another chance to draw away from the nonsense just as the false spirit draws away from the truth ... to draw away from the turning away ... to draw back and to turn back ... for not in this or in anything else are we ever alone ... and not in this or in anything else are we charged alone ... to turn back ourselves and to turn back the other ... no matter how high or low his function how sharp or dull his animus against us ... to circle his waist and pull him from behind ... to cup each shoulder and push him up front ... to hold him hold him still inside

FALSE ANGER

anger is a surrender a surrender to an apparent strength all too apparent all too often but in an ultimate sense ... in the immediate sense there's nothing apparent about the strength of it for nothing reflective hangs about it ... indeed it is all immediately from the moment of surrender ... that was the point of the surrender to begin the execution immediately ... reflection is left far behind but when it catches up sometimes even in time it sorts the false from the true ... easy looking back to see the difference between the two ... for only one at a time can be a surrender ... the false surrender is not immediate at all simply because it is false ... it's all divided diverted to the strength the agency in its power not the truth or the true end in its simplcity ... to serve that end it may serve in the box-like square approach the assault up front and with it well succeed ... not so the false surrender not to the end but to the means ... not to correct the injustice but to start a new one all wide and fresh off to the side ... in a dark corner where you can kill the unoffending

EVERY WRITER AN HISTORIAN

what does the writer do but think precisely and succinctly and play around with the language ... how does he do the first ... he asks the right questions ... how does he do the second ... he tells an interesting story ... how does he do the third ... he admires the first two .... now perhaps this does not satisfy you ... you demand more ... you ask your own precise questions ... you say can you define right and interesting in an objective sort of way ... that is make them necessary and universal ... can you change your particular experience into a universal truth ... if you cannot mustn't I reply that may be true for you but how is it true for me now or even for you later ... ah is my reply ... what you want is the integration of the soul when you call for the integration of time ... you want the past the present and the future to come together and stop their petty quarrels and agree to something true for all three of them ... when what you really want is the end of your own petty squabbles ... to sit down and smoke the peace pipe ... following those tendrils ... what's wrong with you ... it's a long story ... but I love to hear it

HERE

mars and venus are two natural planets the ends as it were of our natural orbit ... just as mercury is a changeable everything is the relative point of view momentarlily in danger of falling into the absolute rejoinder of the sun ... these last two represent one end of the logical extreme just as the outer planets fade away into the dark anonymity of outer space ... the other extreme ... the cold expansion out into blank empty nothing ... far better this inner tension between sex and murder family and war than that between too much being and not enough ... or rather coming back in coming back to earth that's what we modulate that horrific tension between being and nonbeing ... the focal point being as we understand it the earth ... the thrust of the spear the thrust of the womb surely there must be something in between or all life would be just a bloody mess ... which it's not ... the point being the word just ... it's not just that ... it's only something else between the pull and the push the suck and the smack ... the elementary distinction made more deeply elemental how can that be by us ... we being now being here

LAUGHTER AT THE CRIME SCENE

it isn't a matter of right and wrong or pleasant and painful but of good and bad ... the baby moralist is persistent in his analysis ... he likes to be pleased and doesn't like to be frustrated ... the child learns the pleasures of being right and the pain of being wrong ... it's left to the adult sometimes in old age to investigate good and evil their meaning and their future ... abstract evil at first annoys him ... he has after all all his life been fighting the real thing off ... but as with any investigation that's going at all smoothly there's logic and humor and a good deal of play ... if play only in the mind ... not just the position and contraposition of premises but enemy riflemen firing on squads trying to cross the street ... not just necessity and free will but coming home from the doctor with bad news ... indeed over it all disease diagnosis despair and death ... or maybe not ... before the first two there usually is a good deal of laughter ... and before the third there may come a reappraisal of the fourth ... before we come to despair we may come to believe death's womb is pierced by light

THOUGH WE SHOULD HELP

I think it is theoretically possible to follow a path ... a series of necessary and sufficient steps ... which will lead to the most that is the best desired object ... or in other words the best that we can get ... the best that we would want if we knew all we had to know ... therefore also the best that we should want ... but I do not think it is a path that any of us could make alone ... and I do not think it is a path that any of us could make together ... none of us at least who are creatures of a creator god ... perhaps you may say there are people who have not been created but are parts of a process we call nature ... or the universe ... or the god which is them both ... a god evolving ... if not creating then putting on display every moment for ever and always a new array of options in a cosmos that had no beginning and will have no end ... which is not I think the case ... I live in a cosmos that had a beginning and will as a universe certainly have an end ... a new world in which I pray will be my own success and yours too my dear reader ... that neither you nor I nor any one of us strays from the path god has made

WHOSE VOICE WOULD IT BE

if in dying there was a voice within you giving good instructions on how to handle it whose voice would it be ... would it depend on how good the advice was ... how well it was working ... it may yet be a familiar voice though you so controlled it it always sounded like yours ... for that's what you did to all the advice in your head coming your way ... whether it was good advice or just vice it always had the same voice in your voice ... it was you might have said what all good editors do ... assimilate but filter ... you were after all the one in charge of the concern and you would be the one charged with it if it went bad ... well in a sense it was now as bad as can be if you were dying ... and it might not hurt if you could get some cover ... maybe talk less ... maybe just listen ... and in the quiet perhaps perhaps to hear a voice not your own ... whose would it be ... in the last minutes or days would we not all have the same prayer ... finally to get really good advice ... maybe even the meaning of life now that it was coming to an end ... but being strung out like this on the final thread you might settle for less ... someone getting you out of this ... but safely

AN EARLY BUT IRRITATING FAMILY ARGUMENT

when he was a child in the middle of a family filming he burped ... not an ordinary burp mind you but an extended list of premises ending in a conclusion and all in german though he spoke but his native tongue american english ... this was just after the end of the second world war and the language of the burp was still considered offensive ... the syllogism however was the main point of objection from the family and they held it against him thereafter ... they said that conclusion never could follow those premises according to the necessary must ... and if he meant to put them together with a might there never could be a right in it and certainly never any real may ... though of course he could if indeed he would ... naturally the boy was appalled by this modal declaration and he felt as well because they never did return to it that no proper argument had been given for their own conclusion critical of his which at least had gone to the trouble of presenting a series of precedents ... a rather long series ... which if anything might be incomplete ... that is too short ... but with an implied promise of more to come

WHAT THE SYREN SAID

the syren's voice carries over the still water ... who knows or can remember what it says ... even how it sounds ... it doesn't matter for it confuses the senses and sends pictures through the ear and ideas through the eye ... you hear of a form perfect in shape but the shape means something you cannot quite see though you understand it you feel very well ... it's a constant a basic everywhere and everywhen and that's a part of the problem ... at any moment it seems to be the color and figure you most admire but each moment's favorite is different from the rest ... she speaks in all the languages of the world ... the color of her skin is the darkest night to purest snow with the rainbow mimicked throughout in between ... the taste on her tongue the touch of her knee the presence of her mind floating through it all ... something familiar in her story on the page in her look on screen ... the idea is the motive the idea of her throughout ... to give her a name would be choosing one color or taste or time ahead of all the others ... to say circle or light smooth and warm is to come closer ... closer to her voice

HOW BEING NEGATIVE CLAIMS TO KNOW MORE THAN BEING POSITIVE DOES

I stood in line behind two logicians the other day ... they were talking about distribution ... they spoke as if they came from another planet and a strange sparse one at that ... they were talking about distribution as if it were universal ...indeed they mentioned only one alternative to being distributed and didn't bother to give it its own name ... calling it merely the undistributed ... by which they meant anything particular ... they said it was easy to tell what they were doing ... just look at the logical form they agreed ... just look at the quantifier ... and when considering the predicate look at the copula ... then they got to the strangest part of all and I must admit so strange I found it intriguing ... you claim more they said by going negative than by being positive ... it may be fine that all S is P but S belongs to P ... P includes S and may do other things as well ... on the side as it were ... and who can tell what that may or may not be ... but when you say no S is P it means no matter how nice P is or tries to be it never ever will do for S ... it doesn't matter what else anywhere it might do or say ... for here wherever and always we know all about S and P and it's no

cf Kreeft, Socratic Logic, pp 103-104

HOW THE SPIRIT REVEALS ITSELF IN WORDS

these pacres are contemplative and theoretical ... all that which is applied and practical is outside but hopefully close around them ... nonetheless to tell the truth in the past it has not been so ... looking at the practical in the most comprehensive sense it would include not only that which is effective in its result but also moral ... of that which is effective toward salvation ... we must admit we have not been much effective in either sense outside these pacres just as we have not been more than hit or miss inside them ... but all this I wish now to argue is beside the point ... the point that is that is these pacres ... though they are not practical it does not mean they have no practical aspirations ... no ambition in a physical sense ... rather they take their hope from reading in general ... in fifty years the kind of effect that counts in this sense is not of the multiple choice factual variety ... not even much of the true or false kind ... the result is more nebulous than that ... not so much of nouns and verbs as of adjectives and adverbs ... not of place as much as direction ... we read I write to get the right attitude

THE FAILED MISSION

see how stately they step off the map on schedule and on tap ... they'll be at the crossroads on time and in strength ... they came down the road and through the woods together ... the enemy thought he'd have time to react and bloodied him in the face as he came out of the forest ... then ran into the building ... then one building back ... where he had a clean line of sight both to the building next door and to the road leading off the map ... with an heroic leader and an elite squad and a heavy machine gun he thought he'd hold the point forever ... and he did ... still behold the soldiers as they exit the map ... how stately they march though not together ... one by one they leave the map ... not in despisal of what they leave behind ... but they leave it behind nonetheless ... the world of iron and machine parts ... of steel and ball bearings ... of fear ... of family ... and the loss of life ... the world of the forest and the plain ... of purpose and failed mission ... they come to the crossroad on time and they come in strength ... but they come as markers on the map they left behind ... they come as a flag of surrender