THE AUTHOR

this is a funny thing about reading books ... you don't remember them for long ... if re means again and it does and member what I think it does then to remember is to return to consciousness one of its members* ... there might be such a memory of books we've read in vivid detail awaiting us all even as now it should pertain to just a few of us ... but as it is ... given its poor performance ... it doesn't seem likely we read to retain ... put the average book down and a week later it's gone ... on the other hand there is a second strange feature about reading a book ... unless somebody reads it out loud reading a book is a private endeavor ... look at a person reading ... they are private but attractively so ... we love to see people reading ... that is ... what we see then we love ... so what is it we see when we see them seeing their books ... I think it's them ... we see them ... for what they're doing is private and attractive because it's personal ... what we see is their persons ... now look a second longer and imagine you actually see their sight ... what does it see ... the object of their sight ... their hearing ... their mind ... I think it's another person

*unfortunately another sad example of folk etymology: the root here is from the Latin for mind, not member, more like memoir than member; but nice try

WHY WE SHOULD NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE INFLUENCE OF ANGELS

some will have it tradition says there are many more angels than there ever will be of us ... a surplus of angels even after we all get one ... and some more to guide us and guard us in our time and here's the catch in their time too ... it's a good idea to quarantine aliens ... you don't know what they're bringing with them and whether you can handle it ... like angel time ... not like our time but somewhere in between and smack dab in the during of which we find ourselves because of the angel assigned to stay with us in his time and ours ... now and hereafter ... for how could he leave us programmed as it were but through his own free will to love us and stand beside us ... to guard us and guide us and here's the strange part it will take angel time for us to understand to enjoy our company ... until we get to god's time which in the heart of it how could we or even an angel ever understand or presume to say what happens then with angels or with us ... in the mean time here we are in our time ... a mean time for sure ... but how much more meaningless without angels and their time to come now

THREE APPROACHES TO ANGELOLOGY

are you angelophobic ... is it a serious condition ... is it fatal ... when I think of angels I think of two words private conversation ... you can jelly yourself all over in angelophobia anti-toxin kill on the first approach and go into a room alone with no outside access and have a conversation with yourself ... but you know and I know it won't be a real conversation ... for the self isn't real ... it's just you the body in the room going through the motions making the sounds as if ... or you might be an angelophiliac alone in the room thirsting for a conversation with a spiritual being ... maybe in fact having a drink with a fellow creature but one by definition neither inside nor outside the room ... a private conversation between the two of you ... then again you might be an angelofanatic with a cream too as it were an ointment or an oration a formula or just a form a pattern a ritual ... zone out zone in step aside take a vacation ... come back and ask how did things go when I was gone ... the public conversation you all had while I was sleeping in private ... did anyone mention me ... no no not necessary ... here only to serve

ANGEL, LISTEN TO ME

angel tell me more about your kind ... not the part where you appear with two four or six wings ... not even the part when by your presence you light the room in the middle of the night so the one you love and guard can read and write ... tell me more of your kind as it is a kind of creature unlike man as man in our turn is not like any other animal ... they have instinct ... we have deduction ... you have immediate access to ideas in god's mind ... animals have a knowledge of particulars ... we have particulars and their mate universals ... you are so immensely particular you're a type a universal each to his own a species each in yourself ... animals have experience and walk the path of least resistance ... creatures of habit they run in a groove ... we're given chisels and hammers and put on our knees to clear a new path so we may stand upright to reveal the truth written in stone ... not by the accidental association of particulars but the law necessary and absolute ... but listen to me telling you who have the power of speech without making a sound ... who have chosen the truth for all time and timeless

cf kreeft, logic, p186

TRUE TO HIS DESIRE

the addict is like the rest of us he's trying to keep it together ... but he has a better idea perhaps but sharper than we do of what's missing ... two parts in control one part absent ... the addict finds the missing third in the drug he's called to study ... the rest of us each day go off to our squares of opposition ... yes no more less this question or that this question and that ... when we get home at night do we still know there's a missing third ... this addict does and if he's serious he's been an hour or two investigating the mystery ... a missing third of what whose third he asks how a third and not a fourth ... but he only does this because he loves the color in the glass or the swirl of smoke in the light ... they remind him of what's done better at night ... so much better he starts to begin during the day ... it's not as they say to get him through the night ... he only worries that way at the end of the night just an hour or two before dawn ... when you're coming home from work he's an hour or two already begun ... getting ready for the night ... when you're sleeping pestered by dreams he's alone with his desire

DESTINY AS A SHIP

democracy or the republic ... justice or prudence ... caesar or cicero ... the will of the people or the constitution ... a false dichotomy with the historical allusion to a disaster of civil war assassination and execution meant to exacerbate the reason with drama and emotion to divert from the true combination ... that you can't have one without the other ... democracy and the republic ... whoa whoa I hear you say here we are together on the placid logical surface of the lake republic on board the mighty steamer democracy but who's that puffing alongside with powerful bellow bursts of good health and vitality ... it's the steamship plutocracy and her cousin ship the crown ... and see the aircraft carriers the cross and the crescent beyond them ... ah yes but look behind back there taking on water and constantly bailing out in thirty-year pails ... autocracy sinking on the horizon ... we send no ships back to pick up their survivors ... as for plutocracy and the crown look more closely ... see ... they're food and supply ... we're the mother ship with the mother load with air scouts before us

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

HOMUNCULUS

is it possible ... perhaps it would require some kind of reincarnation ... to spend an entire human life trying to learn one lesson ... homunculus say ... or the difference between the subject and object for another ... or put them together and ask what kind of subject can it be ... riddled with this kind of plurality ... homunculus the little man inside ... is he there to listen ... to counsel ... or to take charge ... just what kind of control does he have and where's his warrant for it ... does it help that together we sit by the side and watch the game progress in the objective field ... does that help make him the same kind of subject that I am ... but how would that be ... I am self-taught to believe there is no other subject the same kind as I am ... the point being there is none such for any other subject either ... that kind of being what we are ... irreplaceable if expendable ... absolutely unique if relatively short-lived ... wasn't it I that powered by my direction this fleshy machine for the most part of every day ... I do not speak of the nights ... they were a wildness I do not recall ... perhaps some lapses we may call homuncular

MATURATION

the sense of lateral transference and its right and necessity to thrive called also I believe subsidiarity is as you can see by the claim anything but a trivial nonessential life form ... while it's true that our lateral transactions are subject to vertical infusions of grace and disaster there's a residual point in us still resistant to all interference sometimes in particular when we can see that it does us good ... I'm not saying this reluctance to stop and as it were be tampered with is itself of necessity a good thing ... indeed I hope I may expect with reason that it will pass away in the childhood at least of my age and of the race ... but all this time otherwise I expect it may do us some good service when we have the good sense as well to stop with a will and listen ... are the rumblings in the rear a malevolent force bent on disruption ... does that whisper of good news up front intend to tell us the truth ... is the rapping on the lid above my head a safe signal to come out or little bombs thrown by other lateral defenders ... I say I hope it may pass but I know it will not till we come of age elsewhere

TAKING ABSTRACTION TO AN EXTREME

emotion wisdom prayer ... take someone with strong emotion some wisdom and no prayer ... what kind of a thing would he be ... call him the abstract romantic ... make the emotion very strong and give the wisdom a particular and potent form and make the absence of prayer not just habitual but determined ... set the creature loose in bitter times and see what such a thing can do ... give him the charismatic power of oratory and the dramatic wisdom of set design and spectacle ... give him a word one word where all the others have but many ... and give him devotion to that word ... to the idea behind it ... the kind of skill and the kind of devotion that confuse the two in the power of their expression ... in willful disregard of any virtue the idea the object of the devotion might have had ... in violent regard only for its promotion only for its success ... how tall could such a man grow before he were cut down ... how far could such a practice spread before it were investigated and found wanting ... all four of its arms and legs broken

HOPE 101

the dilettante adrift on a swirling sea of books might find a biography he so liked it would set aside his old reading schedule ... the person whose life he read might appear to him in his imagination in the flesh as it were of his mind to encourage him ... to give him faith in the immaterial and hereafter ... or that person might speak to him directly from the immaterial and the hereafter ringing in his mind the two as yet silent bells by those names also called the intellect and good hope ... for what is there in the hereafter to sound anything but good hope here and now if only the intellect be sound ... and what is there in the intellect to make it whole and sound but the truth here and now ... though the truth be absolute and of necessity and everywhere else as well ... that is with all the advantages and privileges of the nonrestrictive immaterial ... these voices have no sound their messages have only their full meaning and this is the main course by which we live from day to day ... though I pick at the candy in the imagination still and listen to the voices in the upper room

THE ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF ERROR IN A WILLFUL ACT OF A MIND

god has made a class of creatures who stumble after lies not occasionally but repeatedly before they turn to the truth ... one rises from the table and turns the wrong way at first ... one bends down when he should keep walking and has to run to catch up ... one is overwhelmed a few seconds by the nausea of despair when he assumes a false pose or puts the world in one before he recovers and goes on ... not once or twice this year or last but twenty-five or fifty times each morning till night ... the planet is one continual burst of light punctuated by clumps of cooling ardor by clusters of simple malice shades of hopelessness blots of shame ... all to block the light or say the moon is the sun ... to lie or to hear one told ... this is the attraction that pulls this class to it ... this class which contemns the truth but fears the lie of another for its untoward consequence ... loves the intricacies of the devious but shuns the blunt edge of the truth ... for this is a class with ties of pretension stretching back before the creation of man ... before the first honest mistake ... back before time ... back to the original lie

THE ARTIST, HIS IMMORTALITY

the artist has an advantage ... the artist has his art ... it fills that category ... that which god did not make alone ... which is the second most interesting category in all of reality ... because it defines creature and creation ... what they did after they were made ... all art all artists he and she we and they make these things ... sculptures their miniatures ... game designers their sequence of play ... teachers their habits of thought ... plumbers their customers' relief ... electricians their enlightenment ... we leave something behind ... even if it doesn't last very long ... the satisfaction of the artist is a mental delight looking at what he has made ... but his spiritual delight lasts longer because it transforms his soul ... in his humility and in his gratitude ... and gets him ready to move ... then moves him to a safe place a neutral space that nonetheless respects his craftsmanship in the things that he has made ... a place where he can agree he did not make these things alone ... he had help ... and now flips the phrase and sees he was the one who helped ... good art helps the good and graceful craftsmen ... bad art helps the other ones

THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST : IN THE WIND

I don't quite hear voices in my head but I hear what they say ... I hear it in my thoughts ... and then I spell the words out ... again not to hear them but now to see them ... what those thoughts do thereafter is that which most puzzles me ... I find myself in conformity with them ... on introspection ... I've heard them I've seen them I've agreed with them ... now my behavior conforms to them though they I thought were years in the past ... I recognize them I see them and hear them and agree with them again ... but we haven't been together all those years ... it doesn't matter ... I conform to them ... as if the word because came between us rather than or ... rather indeed than and ... we are not competitors not even companions who meet on the road have dinner and then part ... the accidental around us has fled and we live together by a necessary implication ... how can it be broken ... we may not meet again these words in the same order and I but we live always together ... I live in some sense because they were spoken some place that one time ... like an airburst in a silent expectant chamber ... their report still echoes on the wind

A SPIRITLESS ANIMATION

what is it about our consciousness that in it we can forget the miraculous ... who fled at the arrest and did not calmly follow the lord ... weren't they in the theophanous boat ... what's the good of a theophany if it doesn't have a grip ... if it doesn't take hold ... what's the logic of a creature who's seen the creator and then can say they've taken him away and given me a more important event to attend ... call it my escape and my good survival ... or was there no logic ... just the escape ... no plan ... just the hiding ... no calculation no forgetfulness just the despair ... whichever way was taken it left the lord behind ... whichever way they went they went away from everything ... perhaps they didn't know it ... perhaps they were numb with terror and didn't understand what they were running from ... but it was everything ... the logic of the subject and the runaway predicates tell us clearly what they were doing ... the mystery is why ... the wonder is how ... why having seen the alpha and the omega would you settle for an iota ... how does the opened conscious mind fall back into an unconscious stupor ... what is it we do when we forget the glory and turn from the light

ONE WAY IN WHICH THE EAST AND THE WEST DO NOT SEEM TO AGREE

if the dominion isn't ours we feel diminished ... when recognition of true domain should fulfill us ... if we're the top the conversation is all downhill ... it is lonely at the top ... much better to be learning and nothing better than wisdom and no better wisdom than wisdom from on high ... by which we mean higher than we are ... or perhaps you know someone who believes that some day in some form he will be on high where high is the highest ... personally I don't understand such a position ... nor how any creature can pretend to hold it ... now in theory or any time later in practice ... it makes no sense ... no ordinary sense for sure ... in any of the ways we use dominion or subordination ... but I will admit to having read of one use of these words in admittedly an extraordinary sense ... in which subordination leads to equality ... even equality with the highest ... I do not say this sense is unique or even unusual in the east where yoga brahmin and atman seem to work it through ... but in the west I think it is unique ... was it not one creature they say leads the way

THE TWO-STEP WONDER

not just you should do it at random but do it at random it's likely to be better than what you have now ... what if we had a two-step character and this is how he thought ... I will break the commandments even though they tell me my world will be worse ... they were right it is worse I will blame the commandments ... I didn't break them often enough and when I did I did it poorly ... if I could do it again I would break them completely ... who were they to follow me around when no one else was there and say this was so because they were in me part of the code that made me up ... there is no code that makes me up from the fingertip to the tip of my toe ... no string that strings me together but time fraying strings time wasting codes ... see me now twelve thousand years ago I am not the man I will ever be again .. sprinkle me with wisdom in chemical forms magical formulae make me a god ... nothing that changes can ever stay the same ... to be the same even in passing is intolerable ... for A to look at B and find C in common between them is all the sin the world will ever need ... everything is new

SHAMEFUL

might she not say to herself as a game ... let's say S is P and see where it takes us ... suppose we say S is a whore ... what can she say of herself ... that she loved too much and not well ... suppose she were more select and adept ... suppose she really cared and felt affection for her clients ... was practical and intelligent ... a businesswoman in her office and an artist in her bed ... couldn't we then say that she loved well and even long ... became part of the family extended as it were ... sat in at weddings and funerals attended church and tithed ... branched out in her concern and based on her skill put her work on film ... reaching great acclaim in a modest if small community ... but there we've gone too far ... not in concern or work or church or art or affection but in family ... whores have no family ... mothers and daughters and sisters have families ... presidents and ceo's and shop stewards have their families ... but whores are hidden ... everything they do in their whoredom is shamed and put away ... there's no love or family in a whore ... we beat it out and mark them down ... the things we do to a whore

AVOID THE WRONG TURN

he stapled in ... spiraled in till he got to the center ... after a while there were just too many ... the jaws got full and they couldn't close ... oh that he could press them together and make everything one ... if all the opinions examples and counter-examples could just come down to one ... a consummation he realized consistent with an unhappy ending ... the spiral in might be a spiral down ... the mouth might be full with the bottom of the pit no matter how tight the fit of it full of it full of myself or any other idle thought ... being one wasn't good enough ... not if the one were false ... well actually being one is good enough for being false is never less than two ... the false one and the true ... if that were true where does falsehood go when the truth wants to be one when the truth wants to be alone ... how can the truth be alone ... wouldn't every good thing want to be there too ... and how could it have the heart or the desire to keep beauty away ... the truth must be a celebration a banquet a fiesta and a fair all in one and everyone invited ... even if all are not able to attend ... those who took a wrong turn and were stapled in before they got out

I TURN I ALWAYS TURN

inwardly I find I'm in conversation with another ... persistently patient he never interrupts but gives no answers either ... so I speak for him ... put into his mouth the words I want to hear ... but lately he's been saying things I have not expected ... and now too for the first time I sense a different presence in the room ... one as quiet and watchful as my old friend used to be ... friend I say though I sense he may no longer be that either ... what was he from the beginning perhaps but my antagonist ... wasn't I his mentor his master ... listen to him speaking now ... well at least as in the old greek plays I remain the protagonist ... I was here first ... but it worries me nonetheless ... who is this third person ... what should I make of him ... is he the chorus or the god in the machine ... how much of my attention should I give him can I afford to give him ... my antagonist is saying all kinds of disagreeable things ... to him I must attend ... but this third one this surd one I expect he may like the other break out into open thought ... I cannot hear the other one ... his voice breaks open in the wind ... is it he still this crowd of other voices ... why do I turn to the third for an answer

WHERE?

what if memory didn't count at least not now ... you could have it in the future ... you could tell each story just right ... but not now ... now it didn't count ... were you there ... were you thirty ... what did you know back then and where is it today ... I had just finished a paper on the eight years of pierce and buchannan of douglas and taney ... what I knew of them is back then ... I don't know it now ... they called the candy mary jane ... you got it at the gas station from your older sister who was your boss ... you followed ... she held your hand ... life was sweet at the gas station ... you had a moustache ... you grew a beard ... you shaved them off ... you went bald ... I have the title I have the idea I don't remember the story but peter is my friend ... put us down together as people who agree ... I don't remember the details but I remember being impressed with the book ... did it change my life ... well yes a little ... perhaps it opened my mind a bit but now it's closing like a fish on a touch of aquarium food ... it's not much that I've taken in and oh so much less of it than I've lost ... there was so much of it then ... who's keeping it now

THERE'S NO DISPUTING ...

what if style counted and it were something personal you didn't have to explain or defend like your favorite flavor or color ... when you picked ice-cream it was always vanilla ... when you chose a new car it was always maroon ... when you caught on to a new author it was because of his style ... I respect eliot and thackeray ... I like trollope I love Dickens ... I like to read a book so I can learn something ... I like to read a book so that I can travel through time ... I highlight and I summarize ... I take notes ... I play Q&A ... sometimes I forget oh yeah I read that book ... it was like the doorway to a well-lit room and I was looking through it as I passed by on the el ... I looked into her eyes as she looked into mine ... I know we were there together then ... but that room is thousands of miles into the past ... there ... but there for reference ... I feel more comfortable when I like the tone of voice and nothing keeps me longer in my seat and more willingly than a well-constructed sentence lean and to the point no matter how long the point is ... how did I come to the taste ... no ... no ... how was I born to it ... why

OPTIMISM vs PESSIMISM

it was somebody else's scheme ... I never signed on to it ... I'm not surprised to see it failing now ... I'm just sorry to be chained to another who thinks of each new plan this is the one to obviate all the others ... there may be another option ... there may be a new devotion ... not to this or that nor to everything in between but to something beyond ... the cynic and the enthusiast have a marriage made in hell where no divorce of course is permitted in such a circumstance ... in heaven there are no cynics and no enthusiasts ... they work it out in purgatory before they come to paradise ... on earth you may say life's a struggle ... the devil in fact has the option on mein kampf ... but in purgatory struggle is life and it always works out ... on earth the boot bites ... you could loosen the lace but you'd rather the bite ... it's a good gamble and gamble you must ... will this be the last frustration ... the one that throws you into the pit ... probably not ... let's take it then ... maybe it will count ... in purgatory everything taken does count ... you get thrown but there are no more pits and no more gambles ... you've put your hand out already ... it's being held

LOGOS TO THE RIGHT

what do you search for ... wisdom ... what do you find ... better questions ... not lord why don't you answer me ... but lord I know you're telling me ... where shall I go to hear you ... not why is biography so appealing ... but where can you see the good life ... not why are these things wrong ... but why is anything right ... we wonder at a miracle and think it a violation of the law of nature but don't see the law itself as a miracle ... we question the logic of the incarnation but don't think twice of the logic of creation ... we say you can't turn water into wine ... yet we think of a grape as nothing remarkable ... we mark time passing and fiddle with numbers when we should be working with letters and higher-order reason ... what is it about these numbers ... string along enough of them and the answer you get sure seems right even if it's to the wrong question ... we mean more than calculation ... though calculation is sweet ... we mean more than forecast though the forecast is precise ... we even mean more than words when all the answers are one word to the right question

THE AUTISTE LEAVING PLATO COMES TO HIS PUPIL ARISTOTLE

the first philosophical notion to excite me was bishop berkeley's that things were just ideas ... I simply forgot the distinction god's ideas or mine ... and when I was reminded of it it was my delight to escape to schopenhauer's garden of robust despair ... then hume and kant came by to confuse me and left an oracular wittgenstein and an impish ryle to sweep me from that garden of my delight and to flail me along the way with the logical rigor or formulaic symbols pointed and precise ... leibniz rescued me and gave me room to stay till one night in a monadic fury I broke the last window I had to look out ... solipsism sweet sensual sound found me at last ... and there I'd be still if history hadn't made me march ... well walk at least ... to hegel's tune quaker blanshard leading my way ... and I would have marched if that call came if history hadn't made me stumble now ... what right had history to interfere with philosophy I might bellow ... especially my philosophy whose plan it was to oil smooth the scratches and the wounds things like history feel they have to make ... what right to make sense common

THE AUTISTE'S LAMENT

I lit the lamps that's true but their flames burn low ... and sometimes it's years before I get back to some of them with paper to burn in their furnaces and ink to oil the fire and wine to wake the sentry ... and though I set them in clusters each to light a city some cities are dark on the horizon ... as dark as the citadel in the struggle for the throne and no way to tell who should sit there ... as you may tell however in this I suppose you are like me I worry more over the citadel than I do the lights on the horizon ... though those lights work their way back home or the citadel remains in the dark ... though I return with the fire and the light kindled by the letters I did not write I stand with the illumination behind me and do my part to block its being seen ... though my mouth and my heart will die without the warmth of the light I do what I can do to interfere ... to forget ... to keep the dark struggle at home in the dead of the night as dark and as dead as can be ... god help me is this my part

THE LAST WORD

as there is no god no being without a predicate without something that could be said of it there is no thought that goes unspoken ... you just have to be close enough to hear it ... while there are some you have to be a good distance from to hear them as we do ... and some of these must make the angels laugh ... and some others must surely make them cry ... and altogether from start to finish we swim in an ocean filled with parts of speech ... with lips and ears ... gestures and sighs ...words and eyebrows rising ... voices and stock prices falling ... promises made and promises broken ... desires on the rampage ... desire phlegmatic ... tone strident tone languishing ... all the time in the world to say what you mean ... all the meaning in the world found in a glance ... the words I am about to whisper in your ear in just this sequence are a magic formula to encapsulate time and space so the next dimension can swallow them ... or I'm talking through my hat and there are no words strong enough to do just that ... though all together they seem to say the same ... one instant cry of triumph forever

THE SILENT READER

there are the thinkers writers speakers ... what are we to do who are none of these but mere readers ... we have opinions and insights more often true and clear than not ... but not for us a seat on the panel and not satisfying a chair at the round table ... we're thinkers not talkers but what does it mean to think if not to use it to talk ... what does it mean to understand and be quiet ... is it much different from the common lot one hundred years ten years ten minutes after the word is spoken ... is the silence then any more informed or what does the form mean when it's forgotten or denied or misunderstood ... what's the form to hecuba or hecuba to the form when they're both gone ... some forms fit the past we cannot think of them beyond it ... but there are others that make the past itself worth keeping if only in some wayward place ... and other forms to which past and future simply do not apply ... perhaps it's to those forms we must appeal ... to the forms worthy of the time of eternity and of the attentive reader ... the forms that suggest they save forms

AIOE THE DERRY-O

let me tell you the extent to which I agree ... I agree with the parts about communion and moderation ... moderation because it implies prudence which implies virtue which implies the intellect ... and communion because it implies people and people imply spirit ... now by intellect I mean that by which we say this S is P ... and when you put it to me What do you mean I'll reply all S is P ... that's how I feel about it ... I will not be dissuaded ... and yet you persuade me ... and now more humbly I reply well some S anyway are P ... but you're not having that tone of voice and I back off ... I admit it's true some S are not P ... now you scent fear and defeat in the air ... you close in for the kill ... no I say I've gone far enough ... I'll go no further ... but I am too old and you push me past ... tomorrow the city square will be full ... and I'll be there with them under the banners all crying no S is P ... and I've said it all ... said all that can be said though you quibble for a pretended exception and quibble some more ... all people are in the sacred precinct I declare ... you may smile ... and we begin

cf kreeft, logic, p146, (slightly deranged)

THE POTHEAD IN SOME KIND OF AGREEMENT WITH THE ALCOHOLIC

I smoke alone ... perhaps you drink alone ... so as not to be alone ... though we begin alone each time by choice ... you drink I smoke so as to stop one time to begin another ... we create a precinct whether sacred or profane will be seen in a third kind of time call it judgment time ... here we have sometimes hints of that judgment in our own good sense and none so prominent throughout as the demand for moderation and the thirst for communion ... not to be alone but not on my terms or your terms ... on neither extreme ... but on the right terms on the terms in between ... having seen the outside time its subjects and predicates in disarray we retire to this inside time to begin the conversation again ... but not I want to emphasize by talking to ourselves ... these conversations are not a simple and immediate delusion ... we have to work a lot before we get to that conclusion ... they are french doors ... they open on the patio ... the patio that opens on the garden ... the garden surrounded by patios ... from books that open to symphonies that begin ... to prayer that never ends ... the first garden

A PERVERSE DETERMINATION

what if the problem is not sacramental ... what if you're just pretending that it is ... what if the problem is something else ... like sin ... I don't know it's just a guess but suppose all sin represented hiding money away in a corner ... something you're pretty damn sure you should not be doing ... this building an ark of your own for the next great rain ... this floating safe you expect will keep you afloat ... made of assumption and desire ... of presumption and yes a little lust ... a buoyant thing at first how long will your reserve last bobbing on the waves like that before you sink into your own little hole on the bottom of the ocean with the whole weight of it on top of you designed now to keep you right there ... well enough to say your salvation is in your conversion still ... to swim up to the surface ... but the water is dark deep and oh so heavy ... where will you get the strength to rise ... the strength of your treasure was in its power to descend ... its solidity ... it has no levity of purpose ... that was just a mistake ... it was simply the perversion of purpose ... to turn a thing before its time ... to twist tight the neck of your resolve ... to silence it ... to keep it there ... there

WHEN THINGS CHANGE

matter form personality and purpose ... not quite aristotle ... a bit of a further development on agency in the right center ... but close enough ... people think 500 years ago is ancient but this is really ancient ... 23 centuries into the past ... we have 27 centuries and more ... homer and the bible ... but 23 out of 27 is very early ... ancient ... now whether or not it's wisdom that's a thing I think we're meant to argue ... and so we do and have done 23 hundred years ... if anything is to change it says it must pass through a door over which there is a name of one of these four principles ... it must lose or gain material ... it must acquire or lose connections ... it must attend to the direction of a foreign agent ... and it must be part of a plan ... her breast fills as she bends over ... it forms just the perfect arc as she sits back up ... there is somerthing in that pose that calls for your attention ... and something in your attention that satisfies an ancient impulse ... today it has been argued remove the foreign agent and the plan ... she bent to scratch her leg ... she rose in defiance of gravity but with no rebellion in her heart ... for there's no kingdom in her soul

OUR GENERATION LOOKS BACK

that there are no predicates without subjects seems simple enough ... though it has been disputed ... but I say more I say there is no subject without a predicate ... not that I mean the predicates must come first ...I don't ... I mean that a pure subject the purest subject is a fountain of generosity and a heyday for predicates ... remember when the sages were lying down in four inches of water in a dark tent in a dark room ... they would dream without drugs and move out beyond the dimensions ... I thought the idea was to strip the self of attributes and relation ... to purify it of these our mundane attractions ... all these petty distractions ... leave them below and ... now become like an angel ... learn the new language purer than math and more comprehensive than physics ... or not ... or truth to say never did do ... and now to see the new ones exfoliating their spirit hair by hair what can you do but say what I have said ... there is no subject without a predicate ... not by necessity but by love's necessity ... for the old must not impose upon the young but wait upon them in their service

INSUFFICIENT OPPOSITION

the heart of the machine ... been there done that you may say in the fifties of the last century and still be wrong in your intimation that the issue is either gone or still back there ... replace heart with will and machine with biological system and you have today's evolution debate in which we have a real contradiction ... or call the opposition creativity or logic in which the contradiction is only apparent ... or suppose by heart we mean spirit and by machine we mean merely matter and form with no personality and no purpose ... the phrase might then signify a revolt against an insufficient modern dualism of chance or the lockstep dance ... a revolt in favor of the traditional four causes being reunited in our mind as they are in reality ... a spirit if not a ghost in the machine and in the time ... a person behind the scheme ... a god before creation ... the industrial revolution did not create this ancient opposition between divinity and a wayward creation but it did add a stainless steel image and a continuing loud grating noise ... grating not only for its repetition but for its message ... it says we don't need you

JURY DUTY

the DA and the defense attorney went out to dinner ... all evening they spoke to each other in paragraphs ... the judge dined alone ... he thought in sentences and each one was either true or false ... but most of all throughout the city were the witnesses ... each of them sees what he sees and remembers what he remembers ... they define things simply and simple definitions have the joy of morning about them ... not infrequently a new word moves into the neighborhood and ripples of laughter echo down the streets in gratitude and welcome ... the long weekend over the people return to court ... witnesses the attorneys the judge and the jury go in their separate doors ... most of these are open to the witnesses and that's where most of the people go because they want to tell what they've seen before they forget it ... tell it so that they remember it ... and what a mess of the system they would make without the lawyers and the judge to pin them down ... one testimony being just a word long and having nothing to do with any other ... no wonder serving on the jury is a thing the people do not want to do ... we know discernment is so hard

THE MIND'S SECRET DISSATISFACTION

body mind will tell you they're not enough ... the body sweats itself to death ... and the mind would fret itself there too if it didn't see something it could not explain but something it felt somehow it did understand and in this somehow was all its trust ... the body isn't paying attention ... it's running in place as you talk to the mind ... and the mind tells you it has its own kind of touch on the eternal and on the immaterial ... the first the mind takes to be a positive term dealing in what the mind knows best when it knows anything at all ... the continuation of time ... that it should continue forever presents no problem to the mind ... to the body on the other hand it's what keeps it running in place ... perhaps in deference to the body's exertion the mind hesitates to talk about the immaterial ... but it has another reason for its reluctance ... if not a shame an admitted weakness ... the thing is you know the mind does fall asleep and in such a state does often dream ... which dreams are sometimes a delight ... but more often are embarrassing ... the mind struggles to be more than it is

A POSSIBLE APODICTIC END TO CASUISTRY

casual ... take the man who believes in chance ... not just chance every now and then but all the way through ... he believes in it ... he likes it ... he tweaks from it just enough rules to get him through a lifetime ... whether his life is by chance long or it's short ... it gives him as many good bets if not principles to carry him through ... he thinks of these few regularities as rules ... not many ... just enough to get him in the game ... and he plays by them ... just enough to keep him in the game ... and if you tell him there's at least a part of his life that cannot be called a game he will quickly and politely agree ... because he's not paying attention ... he's busy thinking of ways to play you ... when he plays well ... if he's serious he will often do ... others will see about his game what they will call a grace ... he calls it his luck and the closest accommodation he can reach with it he hopes is a mutual respect ... it is after all a dreadful monstrous thing ... a thing if you met it on one of its bad days would strike you as not accidental in the least ... a thing which just then wouldn't allow a casual attitude ever

THE ORIGINAL (BAD) INTENT

death is not the end of sorrow unless you're one of the perfect ... but you knew that before you were dead ... knew that your sorrow was bigger than your own and found it a persistent presence of the enemy from the day you were born ... listen to the children cry ... they're just stating the obvious ... and if for a while even for decades we cry in pity for ourselves soon enough we must learn to cry for another ... until we learn the perfection of those tears if only their justice we must continue our study of sorrow ... and what a study it is from the narrative heights as wings and army groups cover whole continents to the shock of discovery a small thing a betrayal but oh with what malice what a debilitating loss in care ... the very thing we came to study ... the very thing we came to repair ... you know what it is ... I mean here despair ... but not the little kind harmful only to the user ... but the big kind meant to be deadly to us all ... that's the enemy I mean and you do too ... the cause of all our sorrow ... older to us than life ... more insistent than death ... not a simple no but the ways and means to make it so ... and the one we mean to stop

WOMEN OF THE WEST

is the blacksmith right ... have we made a lewd thing out of the most beautiful ... are we taking aim at the heart of society the family intending to kill it ... if that's what we are doing we have a pass to let us go in ... into the hearth ... into the home ... a changeable picture with the label made in hollywood made in the USA ... but how can that be ... aren't we just reconfiguring and how can you say that's wrong ... we're simply letting more people do their own thing ... it's demos we are ... not demons ... we're democratic not demoniacal ... we are of all of the peoples on the face of the earth the one most devoted to freedom ... what if we are half divorced ...most of that half remarries ... what if we do kill a million children each year still in the womb ... don't we feed those who survive teach them to read a bit and give them good shoes ... and as for women mothers or not what softer tissue bathed in milk and delight tanning in the sun turning in the night and in such numbers has the world ever seen before ... no the blacksmith must be wrong ... look to him there pounding the habits to cover them up from the head to the toe

on mahmoud at the UN sept '07

FACE IT

enkindle the fire of your love ... how poetic ... how sweet ... how sappy ... love say as desire does not burn ... it is progressive comprehensive ... it's a direction a push and a pull that way too but it doesn't burn ... it may say what's that to me if you mean me ... I don't ... I mean beyond me ... but that's not fire ... it can be severe violent ... it can burn down as well as burn up but I tell you what it always burns out ... it doesn't burn but it does itch or more of a twitch ... that was the thing I wanted ... let me take hold of it now ... a spasm a lurch whose momentum is more to be regretted than not ... a thing not considered and better undone ... it's a species-making farce this search for something new ... well well and all things shall be well but not with this attitude ... despite what it says it's not a progress at all ... it's a retreat ... it's not comprehension but reprehension ... where does it think the push and the pull they come from and what does it think they mean ... severity violence and destruction ... it doesn't mean love at all ... doesn't know the fire that builds at all ... builds in purity burning away the dross ... and why after all but to see the face

THE MAN

isn't he exhausted ... isn't he bound ... wouldn't now be the time to look into his soul and find out who he really is ... the government didn't have the time but I have all the time in my life and what have I been looking for otherwise if this is true ... but no sooner do I go up to look in his face then I'm put in the classroom far in the corner ... science 101 the rabbi is saying is around the next corner ... on the other side ... across from the church ... here says the greek behind the desk is the middle way ... this is the place we separate the lunatic from the fanatic ... one says reason is all logic ... here we say reason loves logic but is not consumed in her embrace ... the other says reason is unreason ... it's the soul not the mind that keeps the body alive and reason is too narrow to read the soul ... here we say the soul in touch with first things is the spirit ... they are one and reason is their conversation ... the greek is looking more italian when he says this ... follow the rabbi out the door ... he has a funny way of walking ... down the sandy cobbled street as if the elbows were pinioned to the side ... hurried down the alley ... I cannot see his face

ONE WAY ONLY

the man or the magic I suppose are the alternatives to a simple worship of the law ... to hold the heart of women ... to mold the mind of a people ... to obey the law in joy ... three ambitions ... perhaps you may say the three ages of man ... if life is a comedy ... but life may not be a comedy ... for most of us it may seem a tragedy ... at the end in particular ... why is a funeral not like a wedding otherwise ... rather than wedded to bliss we are separated from life though to joy we may be headed ... there's no getting past death even when that's what death is ... a thing to be passed ... it doesn't matter it's still a thing to be done ... drug me make solid it doesn't matter it's still the thing I must do ... shove me from behind push me like a feather it does not matter it's still the thing that I will do ... somewhere at the heart of it is my effort and that's the thought preliminary to final that makes me suffer ... the dealmaking manipulation prestidigitation all that's gone now ... in going I must still be reaching ... which way ... the man now or the empty reason rather ... I tell you one way

IN THE GARDEN

to play is to pray and to work is to prepare for play ... to play is to pretend ... let's pretend we understand everything at least everything to hand ... here are the basic elements to the formation of our new universe ... the board the pieces a set of rules ... matter form two or more free agents and a purpose or reason to play ... the victory conditions ... and if you get frustrated and throw the pieces across the room rip up the board and the rules then we have chaos ... and surely soon after a new theory a new set of rules to explain it ... kittens play dogs play ... when we play we play parts ... we imitate others in roles we see them play ... children play their parents ... whom do the parents play ... is it the memory of their parents ... how like our parents we've become ... as they played in the memory of their parents ... and so on back down through the ages ... must I be adam will you be eve ... whom did they pretend to be before the fall ... or was that before pretense or the need of it ... the need to learn slowly trying to remember ... repeating the truth again and again to remember the time before we forgot ... our conversations with god

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN

barry mcguire's eve of destruction and judith durham singing a world of our own ... how lovely and fierce it was to be 19 in 1965 ... one by one we cast restrictions behind us ... glorious to have the wisdom the fathers lost because they were old and outmoded ... a kind of holiness to have a destiny ... a kind of certainty to be new and without experience ... without tradition to be the cornerstone for a new tradition ... but there's no use now trying to close the book on way back then as if we were the conclusion to their argument ... you can't justify the ignorance and folly of the past in its future ... so you can't explain it ... you can't even describe it ... but oddly enough you can hear it ... you can listen to the speeches or read the history and with a little imagination hear the voices ... perhaps the easiest way is to listen to the music ... the more you do that with attention the more completely you recover the soul of the intention ... you feel the original tension in it ... the intensity ... by being in tense with it ... you take its past and future and make them present

THE THIRD SISTER

if it's between that and error let it snap but if it's between that and truth let it stay forever ... that's the power of a transcendental ... in particular the objects of faith hope and charity are truth beauty and goodness ... you can always count on those three sisters as long as the other two are in attendance whenever you pursue the third ... the truth is lovely ... it clears the mind and simplifies the soul ... it deals with the ugly and the bad but only to remove them or it is not the truth ... the good is the dominant sister most insistent on her rights and the hardest to escape or forget ... she evokes a smile however ... however grim it might be ... it's the third sister of course who remains most elusive of the three ... she must come upon us by surprise but makes it appear in her innocence that we have taken her by surprise ... the truthful rigors of logic the beneficial salve of correction she's just not interested ... not just now ... her interest is entirely in you though she looks demurely down ... she may look away but she always beckons ... she disappears but you smile hopefully

LORD OF CREATION WHEN PIGS FLY

when I got a 76 on the biology regents I thought I was point wealthy ... a full eleven more than I needed ... and I haven't learned much in all the years that have passed since then ... so you'll understand when I say I'm confused about species ... is it a logical or a biological concept ... if the second does it provide feedback biofeedback to uphold and update its definition ... what does the stamp say on its ID ... what diploma does it hold to show it's an adult a full-grown species ready to stand on its own ... I was told it had to do as so much else in this world seems to do with sex ... or to be more precise the ability to reproduce more of its kind and none of any other ... is this where we come in ... is the confusion coincident with birth control and cloning ... or are they just another expression of the same desire ... the sorcerer's apprentice hard at study with his formulae in narrow lines that begin to curve ... a feather here a claw there ... change a few variables change a few numbers ... put in a snout put in some bristles ... look how we make the species tremble

LEARNING HOW TO GET ON BOARD TIME WHEN SHE'S FLYING

if I could get past the first person I don't mean to get caught up in the second ... I mean only to mention the power of the third ... the mind-stripping power of the objective ... it can't strip the person from the mind can it ... but it can strip the mind from the person in the deepest sense simply that it seems to ... for the mind I mean here is the one taken up by appearances ... and before I get into a fight no I don't mean just measurable ones ... but I do mean just appearances ... which once they become familiar send us all kinds of invitation ... to define them to play with them to see they can be played with ... because they respond ... they open up ... they reveal and they educate us which true education there is nothing we enjoy more ... for in contemplation of their truth we lose ouselves ... or are stripped of the self-conscious mind ... and become happy ... hours over the stamp collection or studying ants mapping the stars reading fiction and history memorizing poetry ... see we say how the time does fly ... just because we no longer make it ... even to measure by

THE MEANS TO BEGIN

every time you lose your temper do you have a qualifying and then consenting conference first ... if even so quickly you have the time for just the one internal yes before you hurry off to the explosion ... so simple a calculation ... always a variation of heavy is heavier than light ... and those clever instances of such was not the case are saved for lifetimes and generations of wonder and regret ... not touching however the supreme case of otherwise ... when all the mind and all of matter both are turned upside down inside out and reality itself given a new direction ... what's losing your temper then to such a tempest as that ... where's the decisiveness of jerking down the wheel the sharp spin the about face when all faces are turned whether they will or not ... here an auditor might scurry forth yes yes for ends but it's means we need to know ... where is your humility if you cannot bow perhaps smile and agree though sometimes you may be given the grace as well to argue that in this end is all our beginning now matter how we each start

HOW G-D IS MEANT TO MAKE NO SENSE

god damn the devil to hell seemed at first a fitting pronouncement at the close of a shitty saturday morning ... that is a morning whose peak fresh moment was covered in shit ... no mystery or metaphor here ... I mean just a sick cat likely to die ... but she wouldn't be sick and she wouldn't die if not for what the devil had done ... come in among us like that and spoil the inheritance ... the thing I can remember about the devil at the moment of his creation he said no and not like you or me his no had to stick forever ... you and I we get to play with our no as it were accidentally ... for him it was considered deliberate complete ... now if we buy his argument in any one of its forms we buy that same conclusion and how can it fail to be forever ... you may say that's what death does ... it puts an end to all those accidents ... what we're left with is essential ... essentially yes essentially no ... a jointure back to his first word ... the first to put god and damn together ... the first lie ... the first murder a suicide ... to which even we may assent ... so no ... not god damns but the devil

YOU SHOULD KNOW IT WHEN YOU SEE IT

follow the spirit ... it's that simple ... no it's not ... given that form it only says this is the problem of discernment ... we only bring it to your notice ... we say nothing about how to solve it ... concerning that solution wouldn't the first clause be to add the word holy ... in a sense of course that is the solution ... but not in the sense we all agree what we mean by holy ... there for example the madman and the saint may wholly disagree ... and the disagreement between the fanatic and the patriot must call forth whole libraries in support of each side ... some will not admit the use of the word at all ... others say this is because should they do just that admit the word once thereafter indeed they must admit all ... holy is not wise or powerful though wisdom and power attend ... nor is it simply innocence or simplicity itself ... it's a word or title that requires a pedigree and a certificate of some sort ... it has authority and it must show it ... it cannot come in the middle of the night and take you without warrant ... its genus is authority and its specific difference is love

THE TWO VOICES

why only three hours hanging ... were those hours companions to the days ... one to die two to descend three to rise ... take the middle hour ... was it to fall ... to lose the life of the body and the spirit ... was it the mind only that stepped into hell and what did it do there ... was the hell of it the mind racing not being able to bear the complex or the simple ... or a phantom-limb earless-ear deception hearing a cacophony of voices ... was memory a confused plague ... was understanding a terrifying failure ... or was the mind of the dead man cradled in the crook of death's elbow coming again to life waking up in the midst of hell and the heart of triumph ... whose cry human or divine scoured the reaches of time ... was it the one rebuilding creation and the other leading it back ... as they will be heard in history were they first heard in hell ... the voice of god and the voice of man ... how was it the core of hell didn't crack apart and the call to despair dam itself up ... or are they just slow in coming ... the thunder in the wake of the lightning ... the two voices now one

THE IDEA OF WAR

the books the games the TV shows what have I left from them now but the love of a good idea ... take the wargame ... you and your opponent are building a mosaic from the ground up chronologically ... a battle a campaign a war ... this mosaic runs up both sides of the wall is the wall until by the top there are two pictures ... one side triumphant the other defeated ... with the laying of each brick the dice must be rolled to settle the inevitable dispute ... each side wants the brick the one they both must share that will best promote the story its picture is telling ... and no matter how well one side does no matter how clear the story it tells ... it still must roll the dice and accept the consequences according to the rules ... the best games tell a coherent story on both sides of the wall till at the top while one side plants a flag the other is lost in a cloud ... but neither player is humiliated because neither side was debased ... hence the word game to modulate the term war ... but still war ... civilized ... death deleted ... in tribute to ... in honor of ... war

FALSE IDENTITY AND FAILED ANALOGY

may we call falsehood a failure in identity or analogy ... and say gnosticism is a failure of the first sort ... for we are neither god nor gods ... and anarchy is an example of the second kind ... things are connected all the way up to excellence of purpose ... the first storms the heights then turns the guns around on the reinforcements coming up behind ... each bullet killing another upstart's ambition ... singing on its way mine mine mine ... the second has a living map of the universe spread out on a table conveniently before it and upon which it scatters its seed ... but seed designed to sprout weeds ... colorful sometimes luxuriant but always meant to block the line of sight from A to B never mind A to Z ... many gods collapse into one lonely false god me ... or the roof falls in ... the wind works its way down the walls till the last unified moment of meaning ... the final atom ... is sucked into the dark night of chance and I've lost my way and nothing anymore is like anything else ... I can't tell the difference in the end between too much identity and not enough analogy ... there's little of me left either way

IN LOVE WITH ALL THE MUSES

I have two friends ... one of them reads between ten and twenty books at the same time most all of them nonfiction ... the other reads one book at a time ... they both read the same number of books each year ... in fact they read the same books each year ... the multibook reader the polybibliophile has been my close you may say my intimate friend for over six decades ... I've never met the other ... my close friend detests the thought he must be a dilettante down to the dilettantish spelling of the word ... my other friend whom I love for the sake of my first friend tries to keep that poor fellow from the worst consequences of the charge ... which are internal to the vice if vice it be ... but for all I can see he has failed completely ... my promiscuous friend keeper of the harem of books wanders from room to room as it were ... opens each door onto a landscape peculiar to each thought that brought him to the room ... touches her light hair ... kisses the skin of her shoulder ... inhales the fragrance of her discourse ... and is lost in her ambient sunshine ... in her sad toilsome ways ... how can the other ... my friend Alio ... save him

OUT OF THE BOX

pointing to the forehead first and then to the chest ... all right ... but why to the shoulders ... that the force of creation should be first of all intelligent ... that the son of this creation should become a man that he might feel the weight of morality ... that the head and the heart should form an axis round which action should evolve makes sense ... but why point to each shoulder ... is it because the shoulders bear the weight of the full pail and the full shovel ... that they bear the yoke and the lash ... or that they strain against the enemy line and fulcrum the launch of the javelin and the stab of the spear above it ... or is it something else ... something beyond that rod between the head and the heart so neatly after all put in a box and then in the ground ... something like thinking out of the box but not thinking or feeling ... that is they're pointing not to the shoulders but to the shoulders as a pivot for something other than the arms ... something that you'd expect out of the box ... something we cannot see but will lift us again and finally out of the box and above it all ... meaning by all this world and by above it of course by wings

THE REAL REASON FOR OUR GOOD HUMOR

what separates us not you and me but us and it for want of a better word is wonder ... almost like ancient souls we've heard each other's story repeatedly over the ages ... when it comes to telling stories and listening to them there is no gap between us ... but between us and this thing not our thing there is a gulf ... you and I may not always agree ... we may not even like each other ... but we understand what we're doing ... this thing for want of a better word this aspect of the thing we never will understand ... to this we may agree to such an extent that it's the basis of all our other agreements ... it's certainly the basis of our shared good humor ..I think it's in the easy flow of the blood in a rebound or rippleback as we find ourselves legs stretched out rumps sunk in the sand and the swell going back out to sea laughing ... always arms back heads sunk between the shoulders laughing ... now I don't mean the awesome final thing ... I don't pretend to know what laughter then would mean ... no I'm just saying the thing is too big ... there never was a thought to cut it down to size

OBJECTIVE TRUTH

if the priest 5,000 years ago put his hands together up in the air what world was he appealing to ... if a scientist punches in a new coordinate or a sharper focus what's he doing by way of appeal that reminds one of the priest ... what place in time or thought admits us but will not admit we mean too much ... not at least as far as it's concerned ... this is a public space without the quiet empty time at night ... here alone the soul cannot think itself alone ... here the community of observant participation is self-evident ... here the focus of the crowd is too natural to assume ... to think of it is to lose it ... is to shift it to something else ... to itself to the crowd to the individual ... it never is done for this reason because it never can be done and continue as it is ... no ... here the crowd or the individual doesn't count ... it's not the focus that we attend but by it through it as if it weren't there ... as if we weren't there ... simply because the object of our focus fills up all the space and gives us all the logical air we can manage to breathe and breathless hold in ... as forgetful we watch the thing we came to see

SUBSTANCE WILL NOT RUN UNLESS THE FORM IS SET OUT FIRST

how are you going to stop chimpanzees cats dogs starlings and whales from becoming human ... in an evolved society wouldn't the stones talk ... isn't all the universe headed to one common perfection and headed there mentally ... well maybe not ... maybe the increments are punctuated by perfections ... maybe the one true perfection at the end of time is not the only one allowed ... maybe there's a metaphysical principle of subsidiarity as well as one in politics in ethics and in economics and psychology too ... maybe perfection is too explosive a being too triumphant a force to be completely contained and it has to pop up every second or so in space as often as it can ... and still be perfect that is ... and it gives to all life and matter moments when everything's OK everything's just right ... and the only thing that spoils it is the arrow of time ... the thing itself is if anything the target of time with decades centuries and eons stuck to it like arrows and javelins in a shield on the arm of the warrior running across the plain in obedience to the god calling over his shoulder

THE MYTH PLANE

myth is a necessary step on the stair ... not a necessary thing we humans do ... it would be there whether we stepped on it or not and we ignore or decry it if we don't mind being miserable benighted and dull all the days of our lives ... but we do mind ... hence the entertainment business overripe with melodrama ... that is too obvious stereotypes wannabe archetypes ... or for that matter the news business too with its sounds bites slogans and political caricatures ... if you want to board the plane you have to climb the stairs ... if you want to understand the past you have to step into the appropriate myths ... fall through the steps and enter the plane through the belly before you live in the clouds ... walk up and down the aisles sit in seats at random get to know the crew join a passengers' association ... look out the window and believe what you see ... look isn't it odd on both sides a wing ... no simple levitation or ascension for us ... but wings ... therefore something to do with wind work and finally grace ... but no solo flights either ... this is a big plane and no take-off till we're full ... each passenger strapped in ... each with a story and each telling it ... a chorus of myth and hallelujah

IN THE SPIRIT OF MYTH

I do not know them in their identities and cannot claim to know them personally ... I claim to know them in the spirit ... as Lincoln ... the representative man of his age ... the aristotelian hero of moderation ... the cavalier the puritan and the new man of the west to decide between them and his name is Lincoln ... that kind of moderation ... the puritan's drive for excellence the cavalier's savoir-faire and good grace ... the man of law the man of emotion of compassion ... twirled together by society ... twisted together by war ... sucked into the vortex fallen into the abyss ... a shaft of light from the center of the one to the heart of the other ... ecce homo ... behold the man of myth ... only take myth seriously ... as devoutly as the puritan as deadly as the determined cavalier ... and you have what I mean by the spirit ... they talk to you if you read if you study ... if you listen ... the spirits of the past if not the future ... caught for a moment in their prisms filled with light and a variety of color or sloshing in filth and leaving a ring of misery ... if you leave your body and go out of your mind ... into myth

cf for example cawardine's Lincoln

TO KILL THE SOUL KILL THE TRUTH

how far can we run with the secular saints ... with a socrates a shakespeare a lincoln ... well we know each is a saint because he fought a good fight ... each one against dishonesty ... each one for the truth ... socrates for the truth that there was a way of thinking opposed to others that we may call philosophy ... shakespeare fought for the right and the right way to tell the truth about the human soul ... and lincoln ... lincoln had one idea ... that the right way to be a soul was to be free ... and each fought a dishonesty in his opponent that had in it the essence of evil ... one by one they laid claim to it to expose it to destroy it ... that truth went out of fashion and into exile like any other temporary thing ... that it was itself the fair object of lust or false pride and in the end the story it told was ordinary dull and defeated ... and that finally there would come a disease of the soul ... that you could take the soul of other men but keep the body complicit to your desire ... till you took your own soul too ... till all the souls were taken and taken away ... till the body alone rose out of the muck and the slime ... the sperm and the egg ... till each was first before the other

WE LOSE THE BEST FIRST

the one the many and the few ... why isn't that the most popular mantra when it's obviously so true ... admittedly there's something chronologically askew when we only go forward and can't take it back ... keep going on finding content only in retrospect even when young ... when you can't stop even when the music has told you plainly this is the place ... not just a door but a door to a city ... not just a city but the city is a port ... what does it matter ... the ship sailed without you all those years ago ... it gave its berths to the young the pure the good centurions history tells us lost to each of our generations ... the song you played over and over again you couldn't quite get ... of course it was beautiful you thought it was sung to you ... the timbre of the voice had an ankle and a knee ... that you could tell ... ah but her voice ... her voice in particular ... the handle that carries the bucket ... the core all of one piece ... the trill of a bugle ... no ... now a trumpet ... she wasn't singing to you ... you see that only now ... it was their anthem and we sang it to them together ... the few that went on board first

THE TALKING CURE

if we want more than anything else to talk to god are we not making a fundamental mistake ... I mean beyond the irksomely logical point that we're talking and god is not ... like a therapist in a fifty-minute hour not yet ready to give his opinion perhaps forever ... no I mean this emphasis is on talk ... isn't talk a servant to knowledge ... isn't it to know god that we should want more than anything else ... might it be that we've forgotten this and as a result talk so much we cannot listen ... yes I mean you silent deep thinkers too ... you who talk all the time inside your own skull ... not that talk isn't a fine thing but isn't knowledge better ... what else is all that talk about ... but aren't there some of us ... I think I know I've been there too ... who no longer know what knowledge is or think it's just a circle in a fist ... something you cram into one part of your brain even as it fades in another ... something the culture you live in in its heart it devalues ... yes use it exploit it monopolize it precisely because it's such a temporary being ... for we've forgotten god who makes it hold forever

WHY THE MESSENGER BROUGHT THE IRON TO THE FORGE EACH DAY

for two generations he brought the iron to the forge and some of the time the smith hit it with a thin metal sheet about the size of a flyswatter ... the rest of the time he used it to hit the apprentice ... needless to say the repeated blows had more effect over time on the messenger than on the message he brought each day to the forge ... the administrations of the smith had a positive effect on the iron ... they kept it sharp and free from rust ... their effect on the apprentice was harder to tell though they aged him dramatically in all the time they had to bear ... but he considered that a mere quantitative change ... what he intended and hoped for was a change in quality ... one so powerful it would feel like a change of being ... from pride to ascend to humility ... from luck to grace ... from good fortune to gratitude ... and from the expected perfidy otherwise of the rest of his day he hoped for some carryover in quiet attention if he couldn't manage devotion ... in respect without envy ... in nostalgia for a sense of wonder if he must fail to honor its original

CAN WE HEAR HIM NOW

it is incredible that you would define necessity by consensus ... no no just its perception just its reception ... the thing itself is what it is ... its instances its instantiations mere implications though they are necessary nonetheless ... anything that touches the one central truth of the one central being ... the only thing necessary ... flows back from it changed absolutely transformed ... such creatures gracefilled and exploding in peaceful glory sometimes are human ... or much less problematically ideas ... their triumph their exaltation is their relation to absolute truth ... what we call necessary implication ... a dependent relation but dependent on absolute simplicity making their own truth in the truth of their propositions ... necessarily true ... always ... eternally ... how the rest of us other people other ideas accept this doesn't change that initial relation between the truth of the idea and the one central truth but can only add or fail to add to its glory ... through a clear apprehension or one grudging or recalcitrant ... joyful or timorous cynical not triumphant

A ROUGH MAJORITY OPINION IN FAVOR OF NECESSARY TRUTH

how do I know they're connected you can't see any connection ... it's a logical connection you can't see it not directly ... you must look to its results ... well that's all right if you're willing to pay the price of the definition when you say this connection this must between the result and the cause is a matter of custom habit something you've got used to ... well yeah a custom a habit but not mine ... it's as you say something I've got used to ... if it's not your custom your habit whose then ... well it's a bit mine I do add to the pattern ... I call my contribution creativity ... but it's just a trill playing in the wake of a really big ship and if you really want to get going you best get on board ... else you'll spend your life in the backwater maybe treading water just to stay afloat ... spitting out what you're not forced to swallow ... your mouth sputterful ... filled with indignation or despair ... least that's what I read from the writers last century ... more dignity perhaps but angry woebegone and depressing ... you're right there is something of an argument from consensus here ... it says sink or choose to swim

SEX

we humanity love to tell stories and none more so than to hear them well-told ... especially the stories we tell and hear the telling of in sex ... sometimes stories of frustration and disappointment ... sometimes stories of elation by crescendo ... pathos argument celebration and decline our stories tell them all ... but two things they almost all have in common are the goal and the attainment ... and in this as in the nature of their intensities in the telling of them ... the quest and its conclusion ... they are all our literature in a nutshell and we are all high poets both epic and lyric everyman and everywoman as we tell them ... which is not to say though high as we are we fly the thing well ... this master's piece of a story we're all trying to tell one way or the other just the telling of it comes first ... the technique as we know a poor second ... the greatness is in the story not the lovers telling it ... unless and until they tell it with self-abandon ... describe it sing it a golden bowl between them ... they would fill it with roses had they not first done so with themselves

MAYBE

let's begin with a belief ... at least an hypothesis ... we should seek only the best explanation of why we are here and what we are to do ... for instance those alternatives that preserve our identities sanity health and happiness we shall prefer to those which conclude in our death insanity disease or misery ... just as we can determine what has been from what is so we can decide what must be from what we want ... the trick I repeat is to want the best ... pie in the sky wishful thinking you reply ... no no I say just a logical procession in hypothetical mode ... given full reason and experience figure what's best then work backwards to see what gets it ... if you want to work incrementally from better to better-still all the way up to best that's one way to do it as long as you keep a map of the heavenly city in your pocket the roads in and the roads out ... and the landmarks plainly visible ... for the way is long and easily often lost ... perhaps to keep the mind straight and unlikely to detour you should plan what to expect on your arrival and then scrap each plan in favor of the lord's plan whatever that may be