THE EGO DOES NOT FIND THE SPIRIT NECESSARILY GIVEN

I speak for a minority ... I don't know how small ... just that it can't be only me ... I see in my imagination periodic collusion between my heart and mind ... or between one thing playing one part and something else playing the other ... I see this done in the absence of a third party without whose cooperation the party of the first part and the party of the second part would have no part at all to play ... the next scene is set in the memory where once again the parts collude though this time ignoring the presence of the third part ... thereby creating a memory taken for true which is false ... the third part holds the truth of the memory which is false and grieves in its presence ... all the first party or the second has to do is turn to the third part always in the presence of that grief to feel its pain ... and feeling its pain to recover its truth ... first the pain then the true memory then the real event ... most people call the third part the soul ... not me ... I call it the spirit ... I am myself the soul crying to the heart and the mind ... abjure sin ... recover spirit

THE FUROR ONE NIGHT BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE

ding an sich was anything at all if you could call her shy ... she couldn't help but express herself ... but like a fire ... and like a fire she required a screen to protect her audience ... a screen made of anything handy ... wire glass canvas paper nerve-cells tradition ... and like any performer in front of any natural audience no one could see her entirely inside and out but got just a tiny slice of her time and space ... and always through the screen ... but some it seemed would get a better shot of ding and what she was doing than others as it were in the back row who got to see next to nothing ... but it wasn't these two groups at odds with each other or the performance ... that discontent kept boiling up in two or three rows not far from the front ... it was they who accused the theater of fraud ... they who so boisterously pushed themselves forward one evening before the performance ... pulled down the curtain and then cried revelation when they found nothing behind it ... and it was they who sold pieces of the torn fabric saying to the people this this is the real ding an sich

WHAT'S IN A NAME

we are people of the name ... they are people of the word ... we are masters of language ... they are mastered by it ... we excel at manuals ... they have bibles ... we use words to get through things to where we want to go ... they use words to get into things and then sit there and wonder ... even the people of the word concede the power of the name for to name is to command and to command is to get the right to name ... we don't pretend to know things in and of themselves ... it's enough for us to command them ... the people who don't take this seriously are no good in business or war ... they are the ones we command ... the poet on his mountaintop lost in the reverie of his words is the last to speak his language ... the rest are here down on the plain learning ours ... we write the histories we graduate the doctors and the scientists we name the universe ... and then we put it to work ... of all men we are the most humble the most moderate the most reasonable for we know what's in a name and we know it won't last ... all things pass ... in the meantime we intend to thrive

THE ETERNAL PROPRIETY OF CERTAIN PREDICATES?

we usually think we have plenty of time until we get old ... but truth to tell even then ... plenty of time before the crunch ... bozo puts a lit match in an open ashtray an inch below some overhanging papers belonging to odo when odo is in the room next door ... and the library and odo but not bozo go up in flames ... and one of the books burnt with most of the others beyond even a fine grey ash the heat is so intense is a book on predicables properties and accidents ... odo can read that book as when it was new now that he's not with bozo who can't ... now each letter in the book delights his eye with unexpected and playful color ... a kaleidoscopic symphony of meaning tripping across the surface of each word he reads ... what were once sudden or terrifying clusters of light and heat are now joyfully natural and proper to his understanding ... what sang and seduced or then popped and burst an eardrum is now the word of wisdom fitting and proper to his soul ... so odo is now in essence and can predicate a property while bozo fumbles

for bozo and odo see kreeft logic x.3

A PROVOCATION

which is life ... is it a puzzle or maze that we figure out ... or mountain we struggle against something that by will we climb ... is it an answer or an achievement ... now don't tell me both ... I'm not trying to be real here ... I'm just trying to provoke a new opinion ... possibly a new ideal ... or more likely reveal a new aspect of an old ideal ... is it the heart or the head that's the best place to live your life ... which of the two should you let rule ... well suppose it's the head ... how could that be ... why should it be ... we're talking human life here ... at the least animal life and animal hatred and affection ... at most angelic aspiration ... love ... and all that range is a matter of the heart ... yes is my reply but a little hatred and little enough love ... we have within us an impulse which says if we only had more understanding there would be less hate and more love ... I agree with that impulse ... and I'd go further and say all hatred and a lot of accidents proceed from a lack of understanding ... and further still to say understanding is that which first makes us human ... more than judgment more than reason ... because it's first

cf kreeft logic, x.3

COMPUTER PERFECT

why isn't every claim true or false based simply on an analysis of its terms ... so s is p you say ...well just give me a full analysis of s and p and we'll see by comparison at a glance if the claim is true or false ... the balance is either precise and exact or it collapses beyond the province of the truth ... and isn't that the definition of truth ... everything everywhere in balance with everything else everywhere through all time through all space ... stasis supreme ... reality complete ... quick take a picture before it moves and someone somewhere is forced to tell a lie ... well maybe ... but ask yourself is there anything wrong with this four dimensional picture of everything from start to finish ... what about motion for instance ... doesn't it disappear when as here shutter speed hits infinity ... or cause and effect ... who needs that now when everything is explained by its grid coordinates ... or relation itself ... what does that mean when it's lost its wiggle room ... how can the relative be absolute and not evaporate ... what are we missing ... what have we lost ... wait ... is it life

THE ONLY TENSELESS WONDER

some people say the greatest wonder of all is that there is anything at all ... well I suppose ... but what if it all just suddenly went out as if the universe were the last candle in a multiversal chandelier that's already dissolved ... the last candle before the final actual night ... nothing at all ... no god no creation not even the possibility of either ... all the god and all the creation remaining till then wouldn't seem to amount to much without the guarantee that they'll still be around tomorrow whatever day you happen to wake up ... the wonder then doesn't seem to be existence but continued existence ... not now but now not worried about later or hung up in the past as if a pedigree were a guarantee ... not impulse or desire or will ... nor longevity if it comes to an end ... nor steadiness if it peters out ... not the validity of a moment or the verification of a lifetime ... nor the enthusiasm of any particular insight ... but the absolute conquest of time and space ... especially time ... so that there should be no claim but this claim ... not was or will be but am always