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第16章 The Leap

Great Days 唐纳德·巴塞尔姆 8067 2018-03-22
-- Today we make the leap to faith. Today. -- Today? -- Today. -- Were really going to do it? At last? -- Spent too much time fooling around. Today we do it. -- I dont know. Maybe were not ready? -- I am cheered by the wine of possibility and the growing popularity of light. Todays the day.

-- Youre serious. -- Intensely. First, we examine our consciences. -- I am a double-minded man. Have always been a double-minded man. -- Each examining his own conscience, rooting out, naming, remembering and re-experiencing every last little cank and wrinkle. Root and branch. -- Smiting each conscience hip and thigh.

-- Thigh and hip. Smite! Smite! -- God is good and we are but poor wretches who -- -- Wait. -- Poor slovening wretches who but for the goodness of God would -- -- Wait. This will be painful, you know. A bit. -- Oh my God. -- What? -- I just had a thought. -- A prick of conscience.

-- Yes. Item 34. -- Whats Item 34? -- An unkindness. One of a series. Series long as your arm. -- You list them separately. -- Yes. -- You dont just throw them all together into a great big trash bag labeled -- -- No. I sweat each one. Seriatim. -- I said it would be painful. -- Might we postpone it?

-- Meditate instead on His works? Their magnificence. -- Not that we could in a hundred million years exhaust -- -- Its a sort of if-a-bird-took-one-grain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life-and-then-another-bird-took-another-grain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life situation. -- Contemplate only the animals. Restrict the field. Course we got over a million species, so far. New ones being identified every day. Insects, mostly.

-- I like plants better than animals. -- Animals give you a lot of warmth. A dog would be an example. -- I like people better than plants, plants better than animals, paintings better than animals, and music better than animals. -- Praising the animals, then, would not be your first impulse.

-- I respect the animals. I admire the animals. But could we contemplate something else? -- Take a glass of water, for example. A glass of water is a miraculous thing. -- The blue of the sky, against which we find the shocking green of the leaves of the trees. -- The trees. "I think that I shall never see slash A poem lovely as a tree."

-- "A tree whose hungry mouth is prest slash Against the earths sweet flowing breast." -- Why "mouth"? -- Why "breast"? -- The working of the creative mind. -- An unfathomable mystery. -- Never to be fathomed. -- I wouldnt even want to fathom it. If one fathomed it, who can say what frightful things might thereupon be fathomed?

-- Fathoming such is beyond the powers of poor ravening noodles like ourselves, who but for the -- -- And another thing. The human voice. -- My God youre right. The human voice. -- Bessie Smith. -- Alice Babs. -- Joan Armatrading. -- Aretha Franklin. -- Each voice testifying to the greater honor and glory of God, each in its own way.

-- Damn straight. -- Sweet Emma Barrett the Bell Gal. -- Got you. -- Das Lied von der Erde. -- I couldnt agree more. -- Then there are the bad things. Cancer. -- An unfathomable mystery, at this point. But one which must inevitably succumb to the inexorable forward march of scientific progress.

-- Economic inequality. -- In my view, this will be ameliorated in the near future by the pressure of population growth. Pressure of population growth being such that economic inequality simply cannot endure. -- What about ZPG? -- An ideal rather than a social slash political reality. -- So Gods creatures, in your opinion, multiplying and multiplying and multiplying as per instruction, will -- -- Propagate fiercely until the sum total of what has been propagated yields a pressure so intense that every feature great or small of every life great or small is instantly scrutinized weighed judged decided upon and disposed of by the sum total of ones peers in doubtless electronic ongoing all-seeing everlasting congress assembled. Thus if one guy has a little advantage, a little edge, it is instantly taken away from him and similarly if another guy has a little lack, some little lack, this little lack is instantly supplied, by the arbiters. Things cannot be otherwise. Because theres not going to be any room to fucking move, man, do you follow me? theres not going to be any room to fucking sneeze, without youre sneezing on somebody. . . -- This is the Divine plan? -- Who can know the subtle workings of His mind? But it seems to be the way events are -- -- Thats another thing. The human mind. -- Good God yes. The human mind. -- The human mind which is in my judgment the finest of our human achievements. -- Much the finest. I can think of nothing remotely comparable. -- Is a flower, however beautiful and interesting, comparable to the human mind? I think not. -- Matter of higher and lower levels of complexity. -- I concur. This is not to knock the flower. -- This is not to say that the beautiful, interesting flower is not, in its own terms, entirely fantastic. -- The toast of the earth. Did I ever tell you about that time when I was in Korea and Cardinal Spellman came to see us at Christmas and his plane was preceded by another plane broadcasting sacred music over the terrain? Spraying the terrain as it were with sacred music? -- So that those on earth could hear and be edified. -- "O Little Town of Bethlehem." -- Yes, the human mind deserves the greatest respect. Not so good of course as the Divine mind, but not bad. -- Leibniz. William of Ockham. Maimonides. The Vienna Circle. The Frankfurt School. Manichaeus. Peirce. Occasionalism. A pretty array. I believe Occasionalisms been discredited. But let it stand. It was a nice try, and philosophy, as my dear teacher taught me so long long ago, is not to be regarded as a graveyard of dead systems. -- The question of suicide. Self-slaughter. Maybe we ought to think about it? -- Whats to think about? -- Look at this. -- What is it? -- The bill. -- For what is it the bill? -- A try. -- Whose? -- An acquaintance. -- Good God. -- Yes. -- Ought two slash twenty-four electrocardiogram ought two ought ought ought ought one, thirty-five bucks. -- Ought two slash twenty-four cardiopulmonary two ought ought ought ought ought one, forty bucks. -- Ought two slash twenty-four inhalation therapy one four ought ought ought ought one, sixty bucks. -- Ought two slash twenty-four room four nine one five, a neat one-eighty. -- It goes on for miles. -- Whats the total? -- Shade under two thousand. Nineteen hundred and two dollars and ninety cents. -- Youd think theyd give you the ninety cents. -- Youd think they would. -- And the acquaintance? -- Shes well. -- This being an example of the leap away from faith. -- Exactly. You can jump either way. -- Shall we examine our consciences now? -- You are mad with hurry. -- We are but poor lapsarian futiles whose preen glands are all out of whack and who but for the grace of Gods goodness would -- -- Do you think He wants us to grovel quite so much? -- I dont think He gives a rap. But its traditional. -- We hang by a slender thread. -- The fire boils below us. -- The pit. Crawling with roaches and other things. -- Tortures unimaginable, but the worst the torture of knowing it could have been otherwise, had we shaped up. -- Purity of heart is to will one thing. -- No. Here I differ with Kierkegaard. Purity of heart is, rather, to will several things, and not know which is the better, truer thing, and to worry about this, forever. -- A continuing itch of the mind. -- Sometimes assuagable by timely masturbation. -- I forgot. Love. -- Oh my God, yes. Love. Both human and divine. -- Love, the highest form of human endeavor. -- Coming or going, the absolute zenith. -- Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? -- Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him. -- Love, which is a kind of permission to come closer than ordinary norms of good behavior might usually sanction. -- Back rubs. -- Which enables us to see each other without clothes on, for example, in lust and shame. -- Examining perfections, imperfections. -- Which allows us to say wounding things to each other which would not be kosher under the ordinary rules of civilized discourse. -- Walkin my baby back home. -- Love which allows us to live together male and female in small grubby apartments that would only hold one sane person, normally. -- Misting the plants together -- the handsome, talented plants. -- He who hath not love is a sad cookie. -- This is the way, walk ye in it. Isaiah 30:21. -- Cant make it, man. -- What? -- I cant make it. -- The leap. -- Cant make it. I am a double-minded man. -- Well. -- An incorrigibly double-minded man. -- What then? -- Keep on trying? -- Yes. We must. -- Try again another day? -- Yes. Another day when the plaid cactus is watered, when the hares-foot fern is watered. -- Seeds tingling in the barrens and veldts. -- Garden peas yellow or green wrinkling or rounding. -- Another day when locust wings are baled for shipment to Singapore, where folks like their little hit of locust-wing tea. -- A jug of wine. Then another jug. -- The Brie-with-pepper meeting the toasty loaf. -- Another day when some eighty-four-year-old guy complains that his wife no longer gives him presents. -- Small boys bumping into small girls, purposefully. -- Cute little babies cracking people up. -- Another day when somebody finds a new bone that proves we are even ancienter than we thought we were. -- Gravediggers working in the cool early morning. -- A walk in the park. -- Another day when the singing sunlight turns you every way but loose. -- When you accidentally notice the sublime. -- Somersaults and duels. -- Another day when you see a woman with really red hair. I mean really red hair. -- A wedding day. -- A plain day. -- So well try again? Okay? -- Okay. -- Okay? -- Okay.
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