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16.
And then later on we spoke again. We said the same things as if by repeating and reintegrating them it would change the outcome of our day. But it didn’t. Vignettes: that’s what life is often about. Separated experiences that require a mighty effort to put them all together.
When that beautiful woman passed by so close I could smell her lipstick breath, I thought I was going to touch her. I couldn’t of course because I wouldn’t let me. But I wanted to and that is where we went off. It turned into a screaming manic moment. I was so damn mad I finally just laid down and slept in the dead wet leaves under the bench. I was exhausted by frustrated desire. Much later, I awoke refreshed and looking up saw a small speck far up in the deep blue sky. I was mesmerized and thought I would never look down again.
The plane banked sharply to the right and began its slow lazy circles upward. Round and round it went. The vapor trail made a huge corkscrew design in the sky. Later the pattern just magically appeared fluffy white against blue as the plane speck disappeared into endless space. It was then we decided to again talk of things profound. I said, “what is it you want to talk about” and she said, “you”. I said that was not profound so she said, “well then how about us”.
Circular as we are, us and us are we and the us/we, we/us. If we are “all things in a not shall”, then all this is an impossibility that is only made possible by imagination and whatever degree of reality we can bring to it. All the philosophical relativists need to stay back hidden in the bushes because they will be shot on sight by true believers.
Our conversation, convoluted as it may have appeared, continued. We talked of “isms” and us. Today’s “ism” was the subjectivism of individualism and its relationship to biological imperativisms. Our hero Stephan J. Gould may now be a cosmic particleism but the recollection of his witticisms about our narcissism made us pause and reflect on our fragilisms and factionalisms.
In our time we cannot be either or. We must be one or the other and not both. So here we were a bit of both speaking about the importance of our self and the essential nature of the whole. The “isms” assault us and relentlessly try to break us apart as if it is they know us who have the major stake in this life and our precious place on the continuum can’t make it. Our dualism is not acceptable to rationalism but there is a truism about this realism that even our skepticism cannot question. Pluralism is not negativism and true objectivism is mysticism. Tomorrow we will discuss “istics”.
17.
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