The Lived Experience

Do I believe in determinism? Do I believe in science? Do I believe in accidents or cause and effect? Do I believe that leisure is the mother of philosophy? The latter definitely, the rest less so. I do and I don't. I struggle with determinism; I struggle with the fact that science always requests evidence or tries to trace any event to a cause, a logical explanation, for it seems to me science and scientific opinion refutes a person's lived experience, because they cannot believe in anything science hasn't demonstrated to be true, even though they have a will of their own which they regularly exercise.
I don't believe we are thrown into the world; I believe we have agreed to enter, or return to, it. And determined, too, some of the circumstances we are born into. We may not like, nor understand, the choices we've made, but I don't believe our race, our sex, our family are largely accidental. At some stage, prior to commencing the journey, they were within our control.
I don't believe in positive discrimination; I believe in no discrimination at all. Quotas only tip the scales of discrimination the opposite way.
I believe most of us, at some point, experience the inability to feel pleasure; with some of us it's a lifelong complaint.
I believe some of us remain disengaged by choice, and then flirt all the time with thoughts that cannot be, even if the chance or the opportunity arises, overcome; in moments where they are their disappearance does not last long. Faking it doesn't make it. Faking it is torture.

Picture credit: Here I and Sorrow Sit, (red crayon on paper), by William James (source: MS Am 109.2 (55) _Houghton Library, Harvard University).

Journal entry, September 2021. See Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life by John Kaag.

But ...

The honest man keeps his own counsel and refuses to share.

A letter is a living soul, a faithful echo of the spoken voice.

Paraphrased Balzac wisdom that on first reading strikes you enough you return to cast your eye over again, and then again to take note of, only to a moment later, as the mind still churns them over, want to add 'but'.

But...the honest man is doubted.

But...an echo can only be heard if the spoken voice is known.

But...the honest man might be using his honesty to work towards immoral rewards.

But...the echo, if heard, though it might be faithful to the spoken voice might be speaking lies.

But...

The buts continue to interrupt, refuse to accept the face value of the words; for, didn't Balzac set out to prove with his Human Comedy cycle, and indeed prove it, that each mortal has its own ways, of living, of loving, of being both moral and immoral; that no human is entirely one or the other, and that every human can be, many without realising it, duplicitous and contradictory.

Picture credit: Portrait of Balzac in his Famous Dressing Gown, Louis Boulanger (source: Wikipedia).

Journal entry, September 2021. See Old Man Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (Penguin Classics 2011)

Story of the Love Affair that Never was

The story starts with a lodger in a boarding house saying to his landlady, 'Mrs X., I'll not take porridge today, please; I'll take some eggs.'

And I assume that's what he did, with brown bread – eggs taste so much better on brown, but perhaps to him bread was bread, or the landlady was strict in this regard, it was white or nothing, with marge.
Anyhow, that is how, I'm told, the story started, though frankly it was a little irritating that the teller left out these more trifling details; but I can only relate it as I heard it.
So, well lined with eggs, off he strode with giant steps to his job in a public building, on what I can only imagine was a bigger, more important day than usual, though eggs, I fear, would not have set him up.
Now, in this public building were shelves and shelves of books, where people wandered in, off the streets, day in, day out, to look at and, if a member, i.e., had within their wallet or their purse a card, borrow for three weeks or longer. I don't know what our lodger's exact job was, but obviously it involved books and therefore the users of the building, be they very young or very old or somewhere in-between.
Of course, as such stories go (and they rarely go anywhere else), there was a woman, who puzzled and intrigued him; for her movements, when within, it must be said, were a little odd. She hovered around the shelves, a moth forever drawn to the written word, and studying often a scrap of paper in her hand yet appeared unsure of whether it was this book she wanted or another, or indeed any at all. Some of the assistants thought she was waiting for the books to speak to her and when none did, she was dumbfounded. Other times however the knowledge, out of sight of this great public building, had been given to her, and her choices had been made, and transported, before she arrived.
This was one of those days – She had come to collect.
The lodger having seen her library number among the reserved books the day before had also divined this, and had determined that somehow he would engage her in conversation.
She, however, on arrival, did not as he had imagined immediately approach the reservation collection point and scurried off to a darker recess, a bit of paper as always clutched in her hand.
He looked at his watch – his break was soon, and regulations stipulated that he took it at the exact minute to its exact ending second. He had now lost sight of her and lost his head. She wasn't in the children's section – why would she be? She wasn't in Art or Biography. Ah, there she was! A dark-coated figure in Travel, standing prone, turning over the yellowed leaves of a paperback. He looked again at his watch... damn! And strode past with a sideways glance.
By the time he returned, her ordered book had gone!
And that was the beginning and the end, for never did they in the surroundings of books encounter each other.

Picture credit: Blossoming Almond in a Glass with a Book, 1888, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).

Written September 2021, with a little assistance from Robert Louis Stevenson (see The Amateur Emigrant – from The Stowaways.)

Letter to G.

Dear G.,

Wednesday, a crafting day with PVA glue. (What does PVA stand for?) A sticky mess – hands, table – and it's only the morning; but nevertheless on a warm, muggy beginning, when the air is but a breath, a restful activity. DIY books are made, a legacy – for what, for whom? I don't know. I will store them in a box to be found, and hope they survive the years, the moths, the paper-chewing bugs, any natural god-made disasters that befall the contents of this flat. There are digital equivalents, but who knows whether in years to come they'll be able to be read, to be unlocked. And again by whom, by what? It's a riddle, though I'm not sure I care that I don't have, don't know the answer. It's for after, after the fact, when dust has come to these bones. A dust that is being slowly grinded now I think. The state they must be in! Walking yesterday, just to the shops and back, was hard work, not painful, just effortful. The pavement the problem, not my feet; unless it is my feet that have grown picky upon what ground they walk over.
A pause, a break, to wash the hair, to exercise inside, to watch Neighbours, to lunch (peanut butter – yum!) with Robert Louis Stevenson and Modestine (the donkey) in the Cévennes.
Then a further break to attempt again to restore, to rewrite a lost work (human error!), and failing, some online research.
Wednesday, a crafting day, with none of yesterday's near total silence. No; a busy day of sirens.
Wednesday, a day I cannot write a normal letter and stuff full of trivia and goings-on; though the trivia matters just as much as the big; because it all, big and small, passes. One day becomes another, one year goes into another dot, dot, dot.
Yes; Wednesday, when my mind does not wish to think, nor indeed to comment, upon worldly affairs, nor speak of the personal. We are all still here – Mum, Dad, D., Aunt, Uncle, I. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. But here.
An unusual letter, if it can be said to be a letter at all. Perhaps a more usual one next time? (if not penned on a Wednesday.)

H.

Picture credit: Path under the Trees, Summer 1877, Camille Pissarro (source: WikiArt).

Written September 2021.