I hate Judaism; I hate it so much. The division of life into days and weeks, seasons and years, all under the constant flowing and ushering of our prayers and stars: "Baruch ata adonai, hamavdil ban yom ovan layla", "baruch ata adonai, hamavdil ban kodesh lechol"; Rosh Hashanah, followed by Yom Kippur; the clean slate, followed by the steady accumulation of sins; each year, mourning for the lost Temple, each year, celebrating in the giving of the Torah; the Torah, a book of truth, a book of wisdom for the ages, perfect in every word, complete, whole; the prophets, the first givers of sermons, the first admonishers, the first rabbis; the wisdom of Solomon for every occasion, the weddings and Song of Songs; birth, life, death, and the cycles of the seasons: "Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, / ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother"; the Talmud and the accumulation of commentaries, proof of the enduring cycle.

But looking on it all, only the words of the Kohelet remain constant throughout, seem to predict the end: "O vanity of vanities; all is vanity"; in the end the cycle spins out of itself, out of control, out into eternity -- the coming of the m'shiach, the ressurection of the dead, meaning: death is joined with life, the poles of each cycle are dissolved together, the tension between suffering and joy that holds up the world collapses finally as if all of this life, all of this creation, were simply the woof and warp of an old lady's scarf threading meticulously between two spindles; and she will bunch them together and decide finally to put it away, the work -- she closes her eyes and she sleeps -- or she heaves a last breath and dies on the beat up couch, the apartment filled with cats, the ancient antiques, the crusty carpets, stained, and the beat up furniture.

Last night I dreamt that you could use your cell phone to go anywhere you wanted in the universe. It was like you got transported via sattelite (kind've Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory style) but you had to be near an elevator. Now honestly, folks, how fucking cool would that be? You press a button and you're in Paris for the day; press another button and you're back home. Oh oh oh! I hope they invent it soon.

So when my mom, my dad, and my sister don't understand what I write, plus some random people online, I think it's time to work on my prose style. Oh floral, beautiful, balanced periodic sentences, I shall miss you. My heart pours out to you. Oh abstruse metaphors -- if I can't turn my life into a wild conceit, what will I have to write about? I shall have to be...to be...to be...concise! Oh imagine a concise essay! Imagine concise reflections! Imagine not making references to abstruse literature! Oh Lord! I don't know if I can do it! And I might have to stop pretending to be a transcendentalist too! I might have to write about *gasp, hack, choke* THINGS THAT ACTUALLY HAPPEN TO ME. And then (and this is worst of all) PEOPLE MIGHT ACTUALLY READ MY WRITING!!! No more "must needs be" for me :-( *sniff* *tear*

When writing a novel, it seems that a certain number of words must needs be expended in order to establish the setting, the characters, the plot. These words, subtle and smooth or jarring and clustered, burdened down as they are by subordinate clauses or enlightened with the grace of being, are investments; they constitute the corpus of the work no more than a stock represents the business at hand; they are a kind of rhythm, or better yet a theme -- but not melody or harmony.

They are first an indication of its health; we can judge, if they be sickly, that the novel itself is not novel at all but something very old and frail -- they limp along, they do not twirl, they do not pirouette, they do not turn with the elegance of beauty. Or perhaps the problem is that the creature is too young -- it is amusing and sentimental like a young girl at ballet, clever at best, but never ingenious; it never inspires, it never catches the breath; if there is spirit, it is too feeble; or it tests the waters; it is a nervous and untimely thing, it is still-born; or it rots. So the author's idea is either too young to know these words intimately or it is too old and hackneyed to much care for them anymore; either they are set in their ways, these words, or they haven't quite found a way -- and here we observe the bisection of age with youth, the congruence of Erasmus’ follies.

But if we measure their heart, breath, pulse, their electrostatics, and we find that they are at peace or charged, if this is by no means sound, but a fury, or a cool-flowing stream, or a rapid ardor – if there is something in them – still it is something small; we cannot judge a piece of music by the quality of the theme; the theme may be beautiful or it may be poor, but what matters is not the comparative poverty or wealth of the words but the loftiness of their character. These words are not the body of the work, but they are not either her soul – they are mere outward signs, prognostications of inner beatitude or wretchedness. An author can describe Dublin down to a par, all accurate, all correct – he might have whatever insights he desires and however deep an insight we require into psychology, motives, plot – surely these are living and breathing beings, surely these are words made flesh – and yet, what is this quintessence of dust? For the author either plays or he is played; he plucks the lyre or he is plucked from the record, because posterity has as much patience as it has grace, and it will not abide by a novel that merely lives.

This plot is the outward form, but if the work be masterful, it finds correspondence with the inner parts: the eyes as they say are the window into the soul. True pleasure comes from reading the novelist who produces something not merely new but truly novel: novel in that the universe has been recreated, not according to the laws of God but in accordance with the whims of Adam and Eve (Eve, the first work of art! Created the unknown from the known, a world from Adam’s breast). The construction is dramatic, one event flows into another; actions, gestures, descriptions, speeches correspond and play off of each other as in symphony. It is this creation that we call art – we do not simply mass nature on nature, because “life piled on life were all too little”: we take the earthly materials, disordered and without harmony, just as we take the tines of tin and metal and wood, and we reorganize them into a grandeur, into a beauty, into a whole that is absorbed and absorbing, an exorbitant reality of its own.

Here, then, is the value of a Bible: it is a formidable model for the artist who would pursue after and render his own truth; it is a veritable symphony orchestrated on a grander scale than even one of Wagner’s operas. Events clash, crash, correspond, respond, lift and hold up the theme, or tear it crashing down: this is the highest art, this is the most wonderful literature. And are their dissonances? But these are like the dissonances that must needs creep into even the most accomplished chamber piece if it is not to be unremittingly dull – there must be a tangle, the promise must be withheld. And the rougher contradictions, the peeling paint, perhaps it is the ineluctable wearing away that age engenders, but it is also a proof of antiquity and more – lose threads tease us up close, make us question that work that seemed so whole from far away: when we approach a Pissaro or a Monet we see the genius of the artist who creates such strands with only a few loose dabs of paint and play. And the Bible must be proof of a novel whose words are cheap (though they do not necessarily show any outward signs of a failing health, rather they display a vituperative and enduring vigor) but whose resonances and harmonies are rich indeed.

So the next time that I hear some reviewer on bothering about a novel’s accuracy, historicity, or complaining of flat characters or a dull plot…it is a wicked age that asks for these signs which are outward appearances! Art is not the mirror of life, nor is it even a reflection on what life should be – no, it is something more – it may sound beautiful, but moreso the beauty is mystical: art has a certain truth, even if it fails to hold true. How often an old friend demands our company, even though we have given up all pretence and hope of allegiance – but sitting in the old apartment with its peeling wall-paper and mismatched furniture, drinking staled tea and watching cracked lips a feeling comes over us, a nostalgic reverie and ecstasy, in the way a thread of light slants in from the window, and we have entered another world that is vast beyond ourselves, we are intersecting with a universe that is beyond anything we can ever know. So Augustine’s, which perfectly resembles life but is nothing like it – that grand master of fictions – Dante the eternal pilgrim, who journeys back to the creator of his own creation – all worlds and times of places known and unknown. Thus for the man who would live a life – and what man would not, regardless of his choosing it? – I think that the novel, the work of art, by its very being, cannot fail to be the noblest vessel for moral instruction. For as Rashi comments, what power would the Bible have to dispense of a moral law if it were not first an account of creation and a creation in fact?

A Few Things I Want

One of the things I wish I had, is someone to share my ideas with. Someone who I could tell what I really think about things, honestly, without feeling the sharp reproach, bitter against me, that I'm too intellectual. Someone I could argue with without being afraid that they would hate me or that I would hate them.

Another thing I wish I had, is a boyfriend. Someone who would really inspire me, someone who would make me want to be fuller, deeper, more intensely involved with life. Someone who I could share my life with, and actually feel as if I were sharing my life -- I mean, make me feel as if I had something, in my life, that is worth sharing.

I wish that I had screaming kids, yelling at me and disagreeing with me and hating me; developing into adults, each longing and yearning for their own lives, for a city or a country I haven't even imagined which they populate with the secret idols of their hearts. And they would be beautiful -- girls with beautiful long brown hair, and boys with curly locks; cherub faces, of course. And we would have Christmas trees and kugel and celebrations.

I wish that I had a professorship at an important university, and that the papers I published would raise the eyes of my colleagues, and that I would have lunch with important delegates. And then that I would teach classes brilliantly, and fill my students with awe and admiration -- for the subject -- inspire them. And then when the day was done, I wish that I would retire to my desk and write poetry, and read old browned pages of crumbling books, and think to myself, I know about that, Keats; I understand exactly what you're saying, Shakespeare; yes, Eliot, we are all alive;

And then there would be retreats up in the mountains, and quiet walks through nature. Hot tubs, the horizons of Paris, cities I've never seen or dreamt of, burdens, sorrows, things I haven't known or things I don't want to know. But most of all I wish that when I die, I'll die surrounded by friends, not alone; friends who will miss me, but not regret me -- who will gain something from my having lived. Yes, I hope that the human race gains something from my having lived.

But most of all I wish I understood now, and I wish you loved me.

Aside from believing that the Koran is God-given, the next most prevalent dogma is that it is the most beautiful piece of writing in the world. Now I haven't slogged through much of the muddle, but I think this is a pretty significant claim. It would be all too easy to say, "This is simply the claim of a religion, of a nation, that I don't believe in. These are the barbaric remnants of theology to plague mankind." But the fact that so many people have been moved by the Koran makes me step back, makes me insecure; I step away from my culture, I step out of the world generally, and I see this phenomenon of The Book.

The Jews worship the Torah; there may be plenty of lip-service to God, and plenty of rumination about idols, but if the idolaters used their graven images as symbols for the gods, that's exactly what the Jews do with the Torah. The Torah exists in place of God; indeed, it is the highest proof of his existence -- never did so perfect a book exist to prove the heathen wrong. Its sound moves men to zeal, every word has holy meaning, each syllable is the ecstasy of the Shechinah -- indeed, never in the history of the world has any man produced a better book, except that that book be the Koran.

Because the Koran needs to be experienced in Arabic to be at all appreciated. Nevermind that Coleridge said he didn't feel any Westerner would be able to slog through the book without the severest pains and the greatest difficulties, and this, according to A.J. Arberry, not without a hint of sympathy -- this judgement was based on translation, and with translation the attendant ills of being part and parcel to "western" culture; our value system just as our language has blinded us to the beauties of the book; it is, to the task at hand, assigned by its own sympathies, inferior. Just as with the Torah, just as with Jesus, just as with God, the fault lies not in the work itself, but if one feels at all dismayed by the presence, if one does not feel the Shechinah, if one suffers, indeed he suffers from his own; the fault lies entirely with him.

These lies, perpetrated as they are by large and blind religious sects, should make us feel superior. We should feel a certain complacency when we look at these book-worshippers and their silly dogmas. Every syllable has meaning -- absurd! Divine inspiration -- impossible! To be preserved throughout the generations and holy on every tongue -- ludicrous! Ludicrous like Byron, ludicrous like Shelly, ludicrous like Keats and Joyce and Yeats. And let us not forget Shakespeare, who surpassed every other glorious author in his glorious abilities with language. When he questions the beauty of the Koran, doesn't Coleridge say that if the Koran be holy for its beauty, then Homer were a God? And what of Cicero and Ovid and all those other crisping holy books lining the shelves of Reed College's most esteemed academic library? And what of our professors -- they are priests! Priests of the imagination, as Joyce would say.

Mankind worships the Book, not the Arabs or the Jews or the Christians (though I must say, and this I believe is the first thing I will have said about the religion in a spirit of admiration, that it seems much less preposterous to worship a man than a book, and even though the figure of Jesus is a literary character, at least he has more the feeble flux of a mortal life). This holds as true for oral cultures, it seems to me, as for literary cultures. We worship language. We say that language is beautiful, that language has the power to redeem; these holy tongues, this elevation of Arabic, this study of revelation (which went hand and hand, for the Arab scholars, with a development of the science of grammar) suggests the conviction of modern science that man, and only man, is capable of abstract thought through sound -- and it is the penumbra of that larger collossus, magic. There is no ampler expression than the power of tongues, indeed of the tongue, the whole biological apparatus itself. The tongue, the click of a syllable, can move mountains, can cause streams to flow backwards, can scorch the seas and set all hell lose. It was Luther's hand, if not his tongue, that singularly tore Europe apart; and it was the respectable and echoing murmur of Confucius that kept China so stable for so long.

Now for this claim that one must read the Koran in Arabic. Well we must read Baudelaire in French; and the mastery of each language brings to the mind vast new horizons, we must not forget, opens the brain, expands it, purifies it. Until you can write in Latin and Greek, you are to be counted only among the vulgar, after all -- Western Civilization rests on two languages, perhaps three, perhaps four, and nevermind that the revered authors in each would have counted everyone but his own to be Barbaric in the quite literal sense of the word (again, the power of the tongue that grants humanity to absolve its speaker from the same) -- still, we must learn them all. Now are alliteration, assonance, word-play, rhyme, and all the other collocations of sound so pure and wonderful in and of themselves that they enhance infinitely our appreciation of the material? Is reading in the original instead of translation a true gain, or is it another immense religious dogma of the human mind -- the human mind, that for its best efforts cannot escape superstition, that is, we might say, superstition! God who resides in our brain speaks from one tongue to the next, spreads like a contagion, and if even one mind suffers from its own delusions and can express them "beautifully" they will be propogated through the entire race, and for thousands of years no less.

I speak these things, I who am the word's most devout initiate. How often have I turned away from friends, from food, from sex, in short, from the neccesities of life to kneel at the altar and offer my youth in sacrifice? I too am plagued, my diseased mind absorbs even now the Latin and the Greek tongues, and each new horizon demands another language -- Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, German...an edifice as big as the Sphinx; and I will be swallowed up. I will not recover. I am very likely bound for death.

So is there some pleasure in the original language? Perhaps. But is there anything more? Do we gain anything more than blind pleasure! Is that why I study, so that I can stoop over the text like an Arab or a Jew, so that I can murmur the words, eyes glazed, and appreciate in the passing fragrance of a few sounds (and how can we forget here Baudelaire's prophetic utterance, les parfums, les couleurs, et les sons se repondent) my own unique Godhead? And that is exactly the idolatry that seems to lie beneath hippy poetry readings, the love of a great author, the reading of garbled modernist gibberish, the appreciation of the original. Indeed, an anecdote will suffice.

I was studying Latin with someone and we were arguing quite a bit about the meaning of a few sentences. This went on for too long, apparently, because an observer who quite subscribes (like all of us, like the whole human race) to this worship of sound suddenly looked up at us and, in what can be described only as a fit of frustration, said, "Less English, more Latin" -- grammar, the endeavor to figure out exactly what Cicero was saying, was distracting us from what was really important -- the tangible beauty of his sounds. Now Judaism inadvertently struck, not on the truth, but on one truth -- men will not worship abstractions; the Godhead must be revealed and he must be tactile -- if we cannot see him in ourselves, or see in him ourselves, we must at least be able to smell the incense, to taste the wine, to touch the Torah, and to hear the echo of our own voice on the cantor's lips.

The Most Glorious Koran

I started reading a translation of the Koran called "The Qu'ran Interpreted" or something like that...I can't at the moment recall the translator's name offhand. In any event, I have never been so confused in my life! The Bible seems relatively clear and stately compared to the mangled, garbled, incomprehensible verse of Mohammed. I suppose it was foolish to expect to start by diving right into the primary sources. Perhaps with more reading, my appreciation will grow. Here's what I've observed so far:

1. The Koran seems aware of the problem of pluralism. The writer is clearly troubled by the conflicting claims of Christianity and Judaism and is addressing an audience that is also troubled, divided, one might even say. The message is, in this case, the answer; the author seems to have some knowledge of the Bible and the Gospels and frequently uses examples from both to construct an argument against Christian and Judaic claims to a single truth. However, I am not clear as to whether the message is that we should all worship God in our own way or if the message is that the Qu'ran's way is, in fact, the correct way.

2. The Koran mangles (or we might say creatively interprets) its sources. The stories that it makes use of to support its claims are not neccessarily the original or familiar versions; for instance, in "The Cow" the Koran seems to splice the account of the founding of the Temple with the lives of Abraham and Ishmael, of all people, thus legitimizing worship at the mosque while at the same time defending it against Christian and Jewish claims. By reinterpreting classical Biblcial sources, the Koran seems to be trying to legitimize its own claims in contrast to those of the other two religions.

Still, I have many questions: did Mohammed author the entire Koran? What is its textual history? What cultural and historical developments are most important in terms of understanding the Koran? What books are most important? Is the Koran a unified whole or is it, like the Bible, simply a collection of varied texts?

And the list could go on. Now I know you're all on break, and I know that my entries are barely tolerable when they treat "non-academic" questions, but if anyone can direct me anywhere, I'd be very grateful.

Horny I Guess (Show and Tell)

I want to touch his lips, I want the slight murmur of his hands upon my skin, the soft brush of fuzz upon my chin, and the lilt of a breathing chest; I want to open buttons on a vest and invest my body in the soft palpitations, the tremors of inebriation like a soft, cold breeze stirring slightly the leaves covered in shadows, leaves tinkling like chimes in a storm, the storm-cloud fierce of his blue eyes, stretching into the endless night when darkness covers skies and a slight rain falls, a slight rain upon the walks and curving streets, slight rain on the lonely wait and passing cars, shuddering through the darkness: waiting for the bus.

I want you murmur in my ear, whisper in my lips, I need you suck my dick, and spread pleasure spurting like a fire eating up my heart, my mind, my lips, my touch, the suck shuddering through me, moving up and down my spine, splitting time like ripe fruit, bursting like watermelon dripping sweet and sticky red, the sweet of tongue and white of teeth; his huge chest, his fervent press, the biting of the lips, a surge of pain, a spurt of cum – and then the hum of the night, the drowning in darkness, the soft thip-thip of a far-off buzz, the hruz of cruising cars, and the imagination of dawnlight spreading like all places, moving fluid like all time, and climbing into an eternity without the grief of crime – crime againt self, crime against love, crime against man – man who has remunerated sin, man who lies in big strong warm uncomfortably hard and soft my tangled, shaking (still-minded waiting) arms, and with slight tingling of numb skin.

I don't know...perhaps its just because I'm growing older and more cynical, but it seems to me like Hollywood is going downhill. Every preview I see I can practically predict the movie's plot, what cliche's the writers and film-makers are playing off of, and sometimes I can even hear the production crew in conference saying, "Well do you think that having him be attacked by a rabbid squirrel in his underwear would be funny?" "Why yes I do think it would be funny." "Okay -- let's have it bite his genitals; scene three. Now what are we going to do for the wedding?" "What if the groom trips on the bride?" ...

It's not that Hollywood has ditched originality to appeal to an entrenched and capitalistic system of American values -- it's not that Hollywood has realized that it doesn't have to bother making new movies when sequels bring in the same amount of cash with less effort -- it's not that stardom has been elevated above sincerity and talent -- it's not that, if all else fails, they've decided they can just pick out some book at random and stick it on the screen, it' just that...

Sigh.

Oh, and what is it with all these romantic movies? Are we really living such boring and pathetic lives as a nation that the only thing that can capture our imagination is a love affair? And of course, everything is perfect after the wedding bells ring and the camera pans away from the pearly white teeth of the smiling groom and bride to sweep over the cavorting crowd.

Movies have very little to do, it seems, with actual life! Everything's either in crisis and some hero has to (and will) save the day or else someone is falling in love and despite all the antics of his inane and goofy sidekicks, he gets the girl anyway (while we are treated to two hours of eye candy and hip music by the latest pop-stars in the tightest shirts and the shortest skirts). Where's George Bernard Shaw when you need him? Hollywood!

Il faut qu'on touche les mots lentement dans le bouche, qu'on les roule et embrasse avec la langue, sous les ombres vertes et frôlantes de la nuit; qu'on les goûte et frappe, qu'on les siffle aux vagues de la mer et murmure contre les ténèbres, les douloreux entraînements de la vie.

Books are pleasing in that they give us faculty with words, and words are useful in that they grant us access to ideas, and ideas are the fruit of nature, and nature is the flower of life.

I don't believe in great men -- I believe in great ideas and the men who illustrate them.

Pro Omnibus

What I proffered by way of suggestion has been turned against me in outright attack, with or without reason, I cannot say. It was not without some justice and furthermore with a great deal of annoyance that I said the things I did, but still I tried to say them as lightly and with as much deference as possible. I am distressed when, in the course of a discussion, certain individuals try to corner their interlocutor, disarm him, and subject him to the humiliation of defeat -- it is as unproductive, intellectually, as it is unkind, and the keen desire to win, to treat all intellectual discourse as if it were a competition at arms, displays a certain arrogance on the part of the disputants grounded in its lack of charity -- both to the others who are involved and to the sulking and miserable dispute itself.

If I am to conquer you, take your arguments by force, and subdue you until you admit that your position is inferior and mine superior, I am not a teacher -- the teacher finds the student in a wilderness, separated from him by a vast chasm, and he guides him, gently, instructs him as to the bridge's length, width, and height, but in a coaxing and patient manner, realizing that ultimately he can give every specific as to the methods of construction, the manners of proceeding, and can encourage him with every hope of success, but that in the end, the bridge is built by the student, belongs to him, and offers him the choice of leaving those vistas, valleys, mountains, and tumultuous streams he has wandered for a territory entirely new, foreign, and shrouded in darkness -- or staying there, founding with his new skill in construction innumerable cities, vast fortresses, and unassailable outposts. The teacher gazes patiently on his endeavors, smiles upon him, and is not in the least condescending because there is, for him, the firm inhabitant of no one country and the most able advocate of all, the most generous pleasure in telling others those things he has learned, wondering if they indeed come to anything at all, and hoping that what he has failed to establish in his own ignorance he might at least inspire others to strive for and attain. Everyone is his pupil, but he is no one's master, and he counts himself succesful not if he has discovered some new idea, but if he has helped another find one of his own.

Unlike him is the vagabond, the brigand, a fierce and unassailable Hannibal or a Xerxes who would bridge the Hellespont and lash it for the trouble, who would enter into the territory of others who had given him no real cause for complaint, raze their most sacred altars, skewer the suppliants, and only in that way bring them to the mercy of gods they implored. Such a man asks the wise who is happiest and deplores any man whose wealth is greater than his own. Being by nature impoverished, he gazes in twisted rage at all those who hold any possession or territory to which he has no honorable claim and then, driven by his own mad passions, seizes it by force. He cannot deign to sit with others even in banquet, and he gathers up in his grubby hands more food than he could ever possibly digest for fear that the platters and trays, filled with voluptuous bounty, will fall like the Lacedaimonians under the common merriment -- he thinks of the pleasant future when the banqueters, clamorous and hungry, will be able to gaze with the same envy upon his own flowing vessels and platters stained with the choicest cuts of meat, thus insulting the guests, the magnanimous generosity of the host, who has provided for a crowd ten times the size, and even the merriment of celebration and the smooth pluck of the guitar, the flowing voluptuous sound throbbing in violins.

Because learning is a banquet, and the great fill the tables with eloquence, delicate morsels of every type and meats sometimes choice and sometimes base! We are to sit across from each other, each man instructing the other in the delicate varieties of the spread, comparing the merits of the wine, and sometimes, forgetting that food, forgetting that drink, rising above in melodious song and exuberant dance, the very acts by which life -- life! -- is sustained, to the transcendant expression of eternal being. The philosopher is not Plato's miserly and grumpy pedant, hurling insult at the belligerent and incredible guests, but he is more like their joyous host, serving them the best and taking them into the candid light of the sun because it is a joy to their eyes and a pleasure for their hearts. And does he not love the sunlight too? Does he not enjoy the same sudden rush when, having long been accustomed to darkness, he is blinded in a moment? The sun shines every color itself and it falls upon all alike, and there is no man, be he ever so weak or frail, that we cannot guide him if he is able to walk, and carry him if he is not, into its bounteous and fragrant joys. The flowers delight in the sun and move in rhythmic flotillas of color even if they are only fluff and pipes -- nature plays them just as she plays us, and we cannot fail to serve our purpose -- and besides, even the ugliest and most contemptible beings plays some part in the chain of life, and are at base atoms and molecules, moving in harmony with universal custom and universal laws. Our only concern in life should be to apprehend these beautiful forms, for in apprehending them, we are their greatest advocate, and if we make them flourish we become all the more the teacher, the guide, watching in his poverty the rich delight of all. We are like vessels to carry nature, to bring her from a place of all too rapid undulations to a barren emptiness of soil, and when we have poured out our last we will still return, by varied and clandestine passages, to the universal flow, and by our return feed innumerable and divers lives.

So this is my goal and these are my suggestions. If I believe the same thing in ten years may I be banished, for a life without flow, like a pale and stagnant lake, supports nothing but a foul odor and the inevitability of rot. To him who I offended, if I have adequately defended myself and my aims, and if I admit that I seek to emulate all things in order to become complete and whole, believe that this is my sole pretense. And I mean nothing of censure or blame by bringing in those great philanderers of the past, who certainly stretch far beyond the case just as a shadow lengthens with the dawn, and shortens with the heightened day. I am wont to hold, like Socrates, that men do no wrong knowingly or by their own will, and that only in the misplaced pursuit of the wrong ends can any evil be done; I admit in every way that I can have no sure means of determining the right, but like us all I will twist and turn, a stream, fulfilling nature's ends and joining the seas.

The World is Too Much with Us

The cool kiss of crystal rock
Is all that will ever touch my lips,
The hot crisp of the sun’s rays
And the icy tips of frozen blocks

Enough, this rock, these broken grains
Of earth and sand, the fine sky,
The cool wind, and the barren plains,
Stretching out empty, trackless miles

Like the midnight hours and the counting of stars,
The blaze of dark in the meteor sky,
And a forlorn little whisper, why

Do the constellations dip and track,
Trace and fall to the dregs of dawn
And the creeping rays like a forlorn call?

The diagnosis: terminal apathy.

Today, while I was reshelfing books in the library, I again became aware of how intense a dislike for religion I have developed. It is amazing to me that I ever prostrated myself in the synagogue, that a sudden rush of religious agitation came about me like a fever, that I was prepared to sacrifice my whole life on the altar. I cannot countenance such things -- I have not seen the face of God -- I have only seen the face of man; it is not without blemishes, but cool and serene, the color of ivory, rising like a thick mask from the depths, gazing on a drizzling sky. The eyes stare out two holes of blackness into anguish, the mouth parted sensuous lips in a silent scream. What I am most reminded of is that cancerous blur of color on the edge of a bridge, clasped into itself and recoiling in an ever-reverberating, solemn-eternal horror. Is there anything else? The sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars -- these substances which envelop us and develop within us. Reflecting on how I have passed from the mystical to the real, from prejudice to some semblance of self-awareness, I can only feel that it is remarkable that the disease spread even to the very extremities of my brain, almost threatening my heart, my being; and it is remarkable that there has been a convalescence at all, that I am not now a throbbing and pulsating pustule gravitating to some mass of rubble in the streets of Jerusalem; another wispy face engaged in rapid and callow argument with "Torah scholars".

And yet I must be vaguely aware that there are many sicknesses, many diseases that plague mankind. I say man and not woman, I have few political convictions, I have not come into even my own complete confidence, I am complacently indifferent to justice. I stutter words like "love" or "duality", morality, happiness, but what knowledge do I have of any of them? Whatever I have read in books, I have not learned it neither do I see -- and if I were to read Augustine, I might very well turn back to "god" (which I will not capitalize in utter defiance) in imitation; and I have very great admiration for him (Augustine, not god). If I were to begin reading the Bible again, much of it, no doubt my mind would be filled with these ancient imaginings. As it is, with the time that I spend reading the classics, it is a wonder I don't worship Athena or Apollo, Hermes or Mars; but then again, they are distant friends, never far from my mind, and as even in my moments of most sincere skepticism yet I still held some sympathy for monotheistic thought, I can not say I am entirely without sympathy for whatever cults belonged to the Greeks. I believe in the abstract muses if I will not follow them, and I listen for their cry from the darkness even if I do not heed their (always) words. I am such a changeable creature -- I can have no surety that I will even survive to see the next year let alone live by my present convictions -- and to lose those convictions is, in a sense, to condemn who I am and what I stand for to the eternal void.

Today, while I was reshelfing books in the library, I again became aware of how intense a dislike for religion I have developed. It is amazing to me that I ever prostrated myself in the synagogue, that a sudden rush of religious agitation came about me like a fever, that I was prepared to sacrifice my whole life on the altar. I cannot countenance such things -- I have not seen the face of God -- I have only seen the face of man; it is not without blemishes, but cool and serene, the color of ivory, rising like a thick mask from the depths, gazing on a drizzling sky. The eyes stare out two holes of blackness into anguish, the mouth parted sensuous lips in a silent scream. What I am most reminded of is that cancerous blur of color on the edge of a bridge, clasped into itself and recoiling in an ever-reverberating, solemn-eternal horror. Is there anything else? The sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars -- these substances which envelop us and develop within us. Reflecting on how I have passed from the mystical to the real, from prejudice to some semblance of self-awareness, I can only feel that it is remarkable that the disease spread even to the very extremities of my brain, almost threatening my heart, my being; and it is remarkable that there has been a convalescence at all, that I am not now a throbbing and pulsating pustule gravitating to some mass of rubble in the streets of Jerusalem; another wispy face engaged in rapid and callow argument with "Torah scholars".

And yet I must be vaguely aware that there are many sicknesses, many diseases that plague mankind. I say man and not woman, I have few political convictions, I have not come into even my own complete confidence, I am complacently indifferent to justice. I stutter words like "love" or "duality", morality, happiness, but what knowledge do I have of any of them? Whatever I have read in books, I have not learned it neither do I see -- and if I were to read Augustine, I might very well turn back to "god" (which I will not capitalize in utter defiance) in imitation; and I have very great admiration for him (Augustine, not god). If I were to begin reading the Bible again, much of it, no doubt my mind would be filled with these ancient imaginings. As it is, with the time that I spend reading the classics, it is a wonder I don't worship Athena or Apollo, Hermes or Mars; but then again, they are distant friends, never far from my mind, and as even in my moments of most sincere skepticism yet I still held some sympathy for monotheistic thought, I can not say I am entirely without sympathy for whatever cults belonged to the Greeks. I believe in the abstract muses if I will not follow them, and I listen for their cry from the darkness even if I do not heed their (always) words. I am such a changeable creature -- I can have no surety that I will even survive to see the next year let alone live by my present convictions -- and to lose those convictions is, in a sense, to condemn who I am and what I stand for to the eternal void.

Monday, back in school. Classes aren't so bad, and I have now finished all of the readings for the week, which leaves Latin, Greek, and the flute. Whenever I meet anyone or do anything or have any longings or stirrings, the flute is always the first study of mine to languish -- of all the things I do it would seem at first glance the least necessary to my being, for after all I intend no carreer in the field of music; furthermore I am well past the stage of my life where I could reasonably hold any such aspirations -- great musicians train from youth, are sought out like Jesus from childhood.

And yet in some ways I feel that technical accomplishment in music is to the man a most important asset. It provides, if nothing else, a free and entirely reliable source of entertainment; furthermore, it entertains not only oneself, but others, and is hence the more sociable. And music has the additional virtue of penetrating beyond the ephemeral pleasures of the body into a realm where the mind and the soul are connected. When we listen to music, we recognize not only the subtle strains of philosophy, but life itself beating and breathing in the rhythms and cadences. Outstanding musical ability is a of class with excellence in writing, reading, and speaking; but whereas in each one of these there is the danger of surpassing the stuff of life and falling readily into a realm of particulars, the apt musician cannot afford but to connect on a deep level of being with his music. Who would be moved by a song if it were simply an exercise in fifths and harmonics or the transposition of majors into minors and themes up octaves, the retreat of an ever retreating abstraction? But music is present, music is transubstatiation, and music is the perfect discipline in that it expresses without words those things which writing itself can express but feebly. It is for this reason, I believe, that they use music in movies -- because how are we to know grief except when we hear the strenuous sobs of a violin? And it is also for this reason that we so often make fun of movies that use musical themes badly -- because the music, in this case, is so much stronger than the actor's own verbal delivery, so much graver than the situation at hand, that we can only laugh at the bathos, the unallayed chasm between musical passion and absurd physicality. If I were to quit all studies altogether, the orator might urge in high voice, seething in pitch, how I should yet retain the study and faculty for music in that my soul, being carried high and higher above the valleys, the clefts, the peak, the rocks, might finally gaze, through harmony, on the wide open skies and the perfect stretching expanse of mountains. Of course I might reply to this man that just as music is an art that can be done well or badly, so too for craft of thought and speech, but he would have me when he replied that while it is so easy to be subtle it is so hard to be good, as in the field of music so in the field of thought, and that her virtue lies not in the difficulty for the performer, but in the ease with which the audience measures his worth; now there are many professors of esteemed reputation who are but sophists, but a bad musician is scented as quickly as rotting meat.