Reflections In November

Idealists make the best cynics.

My romanticism is impractical. My practicality is unromantic.
Every part of me would overstep its place.

We are moths, decoyed by inferior lights, yet nonetheless worshiping the Moon.

Midas turned all things to gold,
but Shiva even turns them to ash.
The Destroyer has nowhere to sit.

My destiny is nocturnal; my path leads through the night. I cannot tell of the sun, but only speak of moonlight, stars, and lightning bolts; symbols, half-truths, and lies which may point the way to truth, or just as easily be mistaken for it. My fate is somehow to deeply realize and confess my blindness; to stop pretending I can see. I must, in all things, discover my foolishness, and unmask my ignorance of causes and outcomes. Those who live by the spirit know not where the wind comes from, or where it goes. Neither do they pretend to know, but merely speak what is revealed, and are sorry they cannot speak it more perfectly.

Art speaks to the intuition more persuasively than any analysis or argument could ever speak to the intellect. More clearly than by anything a critic could say, the shortcomings of an artist's work are illumined through a simple comparison with the work of a greater artist. While criticism may enumerate a thousand flaws, the truly superior creation speaks for itself, and its eloquence is complete; because it shows (and does not tell) the truth. If, despite this fact, it is still more popular to denounce what is wrong than to exemplify what is right, it must be because criticism, if nothing else, is within the reach of every man. To criticize is the unquestionable right of the many, but to create is the privilege of the few, and to create masterworks is more rare still. An entire library of reviews is not worth so much as a Mona Lisa, a Hamlet, or a David. Quantity merely exhausts us; it never rivals quality.

Men shut themselves in dark buildings, day upon day, for slave wages,
while sunlight drops like gold, and scatters coin over the trees.

All karma is bad. Even what we call "good karma" participates no less in the karmic wheel. Up or down, it's spinning still. But give no witness to the wheel. Your mind provides it momentum. Good and evil cannot be contemplated in terms of reward and punishment, personal merit or personal blame. Whatever the truth, virtue is compromised instantaneously, when consequences to the self are regarded, and the presence of God is ignored. This is why gathering knowledge of the truth is an error. Not because truth is one way or another, but because truth cannot be contemplated; or, rather, it can be contemplated only as one contemplates the life of a corpse; as something complete, and finished. Truth, in order to live, must be lived. And truth is lived by faith.

There is no movement both worthy and wide, whose founder was lately alive. True leaders can only speak clearly to posthumous followers. They are born long after they have died; their immortality begins where mortality ends; formed from the spirit of their works, and not their flesh. The greatest ideas are dropped like seeds into the compost of our times, and do not bear fruit until the ones who introduced them are silent in their graves.

To be an individual is to be an exception, not a rule. Yet, everybody wants to be both an exception AND and rule. It cannot be done. Not in one's lifetime, anyway. It is, rather, a project of considerable ambition, requiring tremendous faith in the future, and accomplished only by the path of martyrdom. To become a true, a conspicuous, creator and friend of the future, one must become a destroyer and enemy of the established order. It is the only way. The man who becomes a legend in his own time is, generally, the last man who should be trusted.

Certainty scares me. There is something so cold, so final, about having a conviction; cold, yet somehow hot enough to ignite the fires of fanaticism. I have a horror. I have a sense that every judgement is premature; that a sincere, heartfelt inventory of the factors involved in any given phenomenon would reveal them to be, if not infinite in scope, well beyond our scope. Every particular occurrence seems utterly predicated and contingent upon every other occurrence, as though there were only one thing happening. Then, to judge any particular thing, is to judge all things. Nonetheless, our judgments of things vary. We must suppose them to be separate, and the seams between them only too thin, too subtle, too buried, too obscure to meet our eyes. We should feel our way, making none but the most tentative, provisional judgments, always prepared to admit the limits of our vision; the broken, tangential lines of sight, which surround our convictions like cilia on paramecium.

Our language is a prison. We say "because", but, really, nothing happens because of anything else. Things happen together on account of their profound sympathy. What we call the effect is only the tail end of what we call the cause. But we like to chop things up somewhere and say, "here's the head, and here's the tail". Nonetheless, it's just one endless orouboros.

This is a small town. This whole planet is a backwater. You're lucky to find a handful of people who can think or talk about anything else. People who aren't blinded by the local prejudices and hampered by the local customs. People who think about leaving.

You can't despise someone who despises himself.
It's bad form. It's redundant -- that's what it is.

Narcissism is adorable. All children are narcissists.

Gabriel's horn is also Michael's sword; whether in the sphere of thought and speech or of faith and will, each divides the false from the true. The lightning bolt of Zeus is a kind of hybrid image, suggesting the clarion call no less than the striking power of God. To know truth, to proclaim truth, to trust truth, and to walk truth -- this is what the items signify. Likewise, Raphael's healing staff and Cupid's arrow represent the capacity to love truth. What distinguishes these symbols and the actions they convey is not as relevant as what unites them. They are different works, to be sure, but the Artist is the same.

There was a greater freedom of ideas in ancient Athens. You could say anything. The more provocative the better. People were hungry for novel perspectives. They took interest, not offense. A man like Diogenes was celebrated. He would not be today.