CT results are back; all results were negative... which is positive! It appears that I am fine, which is wonderful to discover.
Also fine: Stavesacre’s new song, “Kill my Darlings”. I mean, really good. At least as good as anything from Absolute or Minuteman. I’m thoroughly excited for their new album.
Update: Wow, how weird is this?
I dislike the word “balance” as it is frequently used, today. I picture the blind divine goddess with her scale, dispensing equity. Or a lab, in which the masses of two items must be the same -- for there to be balance. “I must balance school and fun or this and that.” No! You must not have equal amounts of school and fun! You must have reasonable amounts of the two -- based on what is good and necessary.
One mustn’t balance between reflection and action -- he must be reasonable. Paul, in his letters, did not balance between the milk and the food: he was reasonable, based on the context, the people’s state.
-- but, no, let’s have balance! For us all! We’d all then be the same, proportioning our stuffs 50/50, so as to keep from tilting the scale one way to the other... which, of course, would be completely unreasonable.
Perhaps I’ll sleep 12 hours per night: I need to balance between waking and sleeping.
I wonder if most of the more stodge mathematical minds lack great skill in analogy -- lacking the ability to intuitively relate disparate elements. While I find math to be gloriously awash in color & beauty & elegance, & view it with poetic eyes, & therefore easily relate it to the poetical (intuiting the fundamental similarities in nature, not expression), a student relayed to me an encounter she had with a math-fellow who heard of my introduction to Algebra II -- algebra as poetry. He was apparently angry, saying that algebra was nothing like poetry...
I’ve encountered this, in the past. The peculiar species, here, is the non-abstract man (non abstraho sapiens? -- curse my lack of Latin training!), who sees a painting, appreciates the skill, perhaps the scene, or even a memory it births -- but can proceed no further. He is unable to make the leap into the abstract idea, to the Ultimate revealing of Ultimate things. “It is what it is,” he might add. “That and no more.” The undergirding: the connectiveness, the similarities between the disciplines escape him, for he misses the ultimates they pursue. (Or ought -- another day...)
This is the nature of the analogy -- the discovery of the basic similarities between functionally dissimilar things.
I suspect this is true of this fellow -- that he lacks analogical skills... and therefore the spark which is creativity. What else is creativity, but the linking of disparate objects through their essential characteristics to reveal the undergirding similarities -- to show the whole?
I wonder if the great mathematicians through the ages possessed -- in addition to their logical mind -- this intuitive gift. I also wonder if the “developers” -- the ones who extend and append to brilliance possess the powerful logical mind, but lack skill, supreme skill, in analogies.
I’ve not, however, delved deep enough into algebra to truly appreciate its elegance. It’s as a man listening to a poem in Latin, a language he has only begun to understand. He sense the beauty inherent in the language (“that sweet bastard tongue,” if I recall Churchill correctly) -- but cannot yet grasp at its full glory, not till he has learned more of the meaning...
She’s leaning forward, eyes wide-focused on the light-wood table. Her back is curved, the shoulders, hunched, her body twisted tightly, as her mind rolls -- again and again -- over the same buzzing, static-thunder thought. She forgets to blink, time and again, and every blink is intentional and, surprised, her body jerks stiffly in reaction. Her burning, violent confusion trickles out in a slow whisper, the mouth too small a channel for her emotions, a channel stopped up for fear of the dark and violent waters behind...
... there’s a girl with long earrings, like plumb lines hanging still from her ear. Their length gives the sense of an infinite line running through the floor, creating two equal geometric shapes, the right angles splitting the room in two...
... the worn chair’s wooden back arches from the seat, giving it the appearance of a man who, upon finishing the day, clasps his hands, leans back, and stretches -- pulling his arms above his head and his entire body out of the day’s ache...
An upper-middle-aged woman is on the bottom of the ‘U’ shaped reception chairs. As she waits for her adult son, she squints at the TV and smiles at Tony Danza, sneaking furtive glances in my direction -- hoping that I’m in on the joke and this common thing can make this fearsome uncommon event, not.
I’m however, listening to Mozart’s “Requiem”, enthralled as ever. -- Swept to heights and returned, healed, to earth.
The elderly man beside me -- does he shake from fear or disease?
Electric Dolly Parton -- filmed, recorded, digitalized, split part, sent, put back together, and all this, and yet she keeps singing! -- slips behind my ear buds and harmonizes badly with my electronic Mozart.
She’s a tall woman, insecurely hunched, unsure of the dominance ascribed to her height. A female doctor with a low, vibrating voice, is talking to her. Whatever the news, it’s neither terrible nor wonderful, for the woman shifts just back and forward on her feet, uncomfortable. -- Sometimes, they are fully on the ground, sometimes just a toe of one foot, while the weight is shifted to the alternate foot. She wears a black leather jacket -- odd. Leather calls attention, but her body movement indicates a desire to hide. Her quivering, soft voice -- as she offers a downcast gaze to the doctor -- displays the same. I wonder if there is a conflict within, between the little and frightened, and the tall and fearless...
All jotted at the hospital, while waiting for the CT scan. The results as of now? None -- they’ll let me know within 3 business days...
Moments ago, I slid through the bubble-shaped entry, and into the hospital. It seems necessary to examine my emotions, on account of the uniqueness of this situation. (In regards to my own life) I’m warm: a glow flows out from the center of my body, and it gives me a continuous energy. Nervousness, perhaps? If so, quite unlike most nervousness, which is all fire and wasted movement, but nothing positive, having no forward motion.
I gulp two cups of cool-aid. The cups taste of wax and paper, having the sort of sweetness and smoothness quite unique to its species. The cool-aid is heavy, metallic -- of course, this is not a bit incongruous. This is not a cult. (Repeat!)
My referring Dr. didn’t give me the drink yesterday, though he should have, instructing me: “Drink this an hour and a half before your CT scan. It’ll taste like metal -- because it is, that’s important for the scan -- but down it anyway, over 15 minutes. You might feel a bit nauseated, but it’ll pass. Also! No food or drink after midnight! -- except this stuff.”
If that had occurred, I’d not be wasting an extra hour and a half, sitting and waiting, as the metal works its way through my system.
(I drink of this cup freely and the cup is given dominion, as the stuffs flow freely through my system... I drink and soon my control is lost, I become man and metal. Isn’t this the act of Christ? He drink the cup of his death and death was then given dominion and flowed through his system, and he became the dead God -- risen again, savior.)
It’s [the emotion] more akin to excitement -- this is new, different, an adventure of sorts, a dangerous adventure of course (what adventure isn’t?) but an interesting thing. I feel more healthy for this particular event then I’ve felt in a long while. I’m sure my friends -- and certainly my parents -- are stressed, but while they are concerned, I just want to grin and laugh -- at the movement of it all, the shifting and changing kaleidoscope which is life. The staid and stolid? They bring death; it is the unknown which breeds in my a feeling of life. -- No, a feeling of movement.
And that feeling, the fresh crisp air scrubbing your face, as it bites your lungs and your entire body shivers for the sheer joy of it.... that feeling, which causes your face to grow flush with blood -- life-essence -- and makes you break into a big, stupid grin... that movement is a reminder you are alive, it brings life to the surface.
Men are born alive; at times, we need to be reminded.
If movement gives me the memory of life, why have I been stagnant and rotting for so long, like a still-born pond? I think because I understand the risk of movement -- one never knows what may happen! -- and I tend to avoid risk. But when I am forced to move, I realize what I’ve been missing. I’d not choose this way -- but, for now, I am enjoying it.
If events turn badly (for, certainly, I am not anticipating this), will I feel the same? Honesty causes me to mutter, “I don’t know...” and shake my head.
I’ve not been feeling well, for the last several weeks -- abdominal pains, frequent trips to the restroom, severe dehydration, general weariness. Monday, I went to the doctor for tests.
After drawing blood, taking X-Rays, and studying other bodily fluids, the doctor said, “Well, your liver function and kidney function are all fine. You have a great blood pressure, and an athlete’s resting heartbeat. Your blood suger is also fine. The only odd thing -- and I hesitate to mention this at all, since I don’t think it’s a big deal -- is this.” He gestured toward the glowing X-Ray, forming with his pen a long, thin oval in the local of my right abdomen.
“I’m really not sure what this is -- I don’t think it’s your appendix, though it might be. It actually looks as if the entry to your gastro-intestinal system is enflamed. But, in the end, I really don’t know.”
“Like I said, I’m not sure what it is, and I wasn’t even going to tell you -- because it doesn’t seem that significant, and I didn’t want to worry you. What I’ll do is send this down to the radiologist, and have him take a look at it. If it’s something, I’ll give you a call. But don’t worry about it...”
Monday passed, and I received a message, today, from the clinic. The radiologist thinks that it may be my appendix, but he’s not certain. Tomorrow, at 9:30am, I head toward Burlington for a CT scan...
I’m not terribly worried; it hardly benefits a man to concern himself with the things beyond his concern. But I certainly hope -- and pray -- that it is nothing worse than my appendix, and hope that you’d do the same.
The child hears the echos of “Fine! Leave!” clanging in his ear -- as he stood beside his mother and watched her make-up, mixed with tears, flow down her face. He saw the smeared lipstick, hastily applied to shaking lips. He looked up into her eyes, looking firmly and saying with adult strength, “Tell me that you’re coming back.” He knew no psychology, knew nothing of the human mind -- did not know that promises are the surest means of constraining the impulses of the distraught... but he still sought the promise.
The Aesthetic deals w. the difficulty of infinite motion w. regard to human experience, but ignores the problem w. infinite motion of negative principles. His final argument, namely that pleasure is found in arbitrary pleasures, fails because existence is not arbitrary. Certain things are and will be necessary all throguh life and utterly arbitrary minds would die, should they reach that state, since the non-arbitrary would be lost... food, for example, muyst be consumed and any arbitrary remembering during eating is sill performed as a result of a necessary attatchment... the very thing the A. wishes to avoid! He cannot rotate this...
Antoine: “It is in your power to review your life, to look at things you saw before, but from another point of view.”
A: You must understand what a wretched thing life is, if it is spent being repelled, away, rather than being attracted, to. If negative principles (such as boredom) push us away, then this motion is infinite -- for motion (which is regarded as good) to occur, negative principles must be ever-present -- and no achievement is possible. There is no rest, never peace, just continual propulsion.
Can there be great aesthetic value in perpetual motion? Running can provide pleasure, to be sure -- but infinte running would not, as the body could not sustain the effort. Infinite repulsion would provide such a death... from the continual running away, away and away, like an eternally rolling pinball caught in an eternal game.
But there is great rest in attraction. Attraction implues arrival. For, attraction necessarily requires an object that attracts. And, short of the object moving just beyond reach, the attraction will result in arrival at some point. (& the moving attractive object must be moving toward an object of attraction -- change the attractor, then... to the unmoving.)
There is something gained, in the end -- & one does not fail due to exhaustion! Certainly, w. respect to the aesthetic, it is better to be attracted than to be repulsed... but attracted to what?
... when you say that one would fire a governess if she failed to entertain her children, you make a leap & an assumption. One might dismiss a governess due to her aesthetic failings, certainly. But she’d equally be dismissed if she were greatly skilled in providing etertainment, but was unable to properly educate the children. The aesthetic is not implicitly the highest, for a lacking in any one of those states you mentioned would result in termination. Bordom, in this case, is not acknowledged as the greatest of evils.
Not that your object is to provide a basis for adopting your position -- your object is, unsurprisingly, far more egotistical. (What else can one expect from a hedonist, who acts in order to please himself?) Your goal is to extrapolate your position, not defend it -- defense rarely provides pleasure, while long-winded discussions on one’s self (via one’s position) do.
Saw a man today, having a sea-cliff brow, blue water eyes, and a proud nose... He appeared noble.
I’ve been wrapped in a strange mood, the last several days, a cloth of arbitrary color & pattern, bright & dark, mellifluous & stuttering. I am not moody; rather, I am of one mood. -- but that mood is an amalgamation of all moods.
At lunch, we happened to converse about the nature of education, contrasting today & yesteryear -- the grand difference in learnedness. A turn in conversation found MN asking WY what I was like as a student; WY responded (roughtly), “Quiet, unless he was around someone he trusted; a good student, though he only did enough to get an ‘A’...” “Only enough...” -- how I wish I could isolate and destroy that impulse.
If autumn is poured out gold, and winter is falling silver -- isn’t the rarity of autumn, the shortness of the time, the thing which makes it the most valuable? It looks as gold, is as rare as gold... and far more valuable.
Laden trees with gilded leaves
Bowing under riches...
Edit (better):
Lavish trees with gilded leaves
Laden under riches...
I am certainly uxorious -- to ideas & ideals, not to this world, this reality... which is, in truth, the more my wife.
From the teacher’s conference:
From the glowing screen, the educator reads: “I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel... I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real...” as the audience breathes of this, breathes deeply, they see the dull eyes & rough skin of the legand, the legend of Johnny Cash.
”... I wear this crown of thorns upon my liar’s chair...” whispers the learner, through the audience’s creased breath, as they feel the choke of the words. And they sigh, the outward rush of air comes & individuals cry as a collective, one sad soul, one outburst.
They sigh because they [the words] are tendrils -- foreign -- briefly wrapping around the pure of heart. They hurt because they do not understand -- this is too terrible, inconceivable, to consider. They sigh at the concept, not the thing in their life.
I wonder if most men sigh at the conceptualization of the thing, not the thing itself.
I sigh at the thing itself.
I finished designing Veritas Forge, makers of fine medieval helms and armor several days ago -- so check it out. And if you’d like to help them out (as a favor to me) link them from your website with the proper URL and the same text I linked it with, above. (Attempting to raise their Google ranking.)
Driven by fear, a man has little capacity for knowing or discovery.
And how could he? Fear looks upon the unknown and says, “I must hide; this cannot be known.”
Yet man lives in this unknown & the unknown must be dealt with; one must meet the unknown. Fear meets the unknown with an act of mediation: being incapable of fleeing the world, and yet unable to incorporate (understand) the unknown, fear creates a compromise. That compromise is illusion & emulation.
Fear hopes to protect a man much as a safe insect mimics the habit & dress of the dangerous... It puts on the apparell of understanding, while not understanding. It mimics careful reflection & novel thought. It’ itself, is not creative -- but it largely appears to be so.
This appearance, however, provides a certain protection -- it divides world & man by thought... a faux worldview that protects the real.
A fearful mind discoers a problem; fear is invoked, a wall thrown up; fearful of the unknown, unable -- according to the basic view of the fearful man-- to consider the unknown, the wall consists of others’ thoughts, other’s ideas, which interpret the problem.
“According to Kant, etc., etc...” the man thinks. “And so this is how I understand it.” -- but he did not understand it. His understanding of Kant (or others) interpreted the thought. He understands via another man’s worldview -- thereby keeping the world seperate from the man...
-- alas, the flaw is this: no matter how perfect the illusion, it is just that. It hasn’t the resiliance of a man, and neither can a man truly believe this illusion. A lie that is a part of a man, he can believe, being a thought itself. This, however, is a lie built on a known truth: a necessary lie, perhaps... but based on a known worldview. A man may believe he is great (perhaps) at a sport -- but he cannot believe this if he already believes he is not.
The fearful man believes that the unknown cannot be known, and -- resultingly -- constructs a worldview which protects him from the fearsome task of not knowing. The false worldview, the lie, is built on the true worldview, illusion on truth -- and so the illusion is scattered and weak.