Roots and Branches

So Man is not what he appears.

I had been blind a thousand years

Wisdom older than the seers,

Beauty much too deep for tears,

And holy silence bursts the ears.

Ssh. The music of the spheres.

About a month ago, my friend Brian and I took a canoe trip down the Kennebec River. This particular body, being an inland river of Maine endowed with not only swift current but also a state mandated building ban buffer anywhere within 30 feet of the shoreline, has incrementally expanded its width due to the absence of impediments: the remnants of many trees, the ground swept from under them, litter the limits of the waterways, toppled over and rested within several feet of sometimes more than murky water. One particular tree, mammoth in size, came down parallel to the bank, with its huge root system jutting out from one end and portions of its now bleached white trunk, speckled with the the near withered nubs of branches, sticking in and out of the water level.

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove Unleaving?

Leaves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and By, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

-Hopkins, "Spring and Fall"

Not unlike the bleached white, bird-picked-clean carcass of a beached whale, this felled beast (did I mention its size? About 8 canoe lengths—maybe even over 80 feet) demanded further inspection. Brian steered and sidled our boat up to the edge of the tree and I jumped out and onto a small footing afforded to me by the lower tide. Brokering the behemoth's back, I turned first towards the end which would've been its pinnacle (you know me, always in pursuit of perspective), whose penultimate posture slid silenced into the sleek sinking of the stream. As I approached as far as that end afforded, I turned back towards what would have been the "root" end of the body and to my surprise saw a lush shoot of green jutting out of the labyrinthine mangle of its long-since-exposed root system. I had to do a double take: up until that unexpected sight, the tree was nothing but (beautiful) death and general obscurity. Yet here stood a sign of life staring, starting anew: in fact, the new sapling was the old tree itself! From what I saw, it looked as though the new growth above and supported by the dead wood was the business end of something still alive (and connected to life) way down deep in the old roots, yet its true life mechanism obscured (just furthest most former height of the tree) beneath the water. And that is some mystery to me. That's what I love so much about this place. The natural world warrants such limitless wonderment. Nothing ever works quite in the ways we plan for or anticipate (or am I imposing too much of an autobiography?).

A friend of mine wrote in his most recent letter:

 "Even though I too am susceptible to the beauty of nature including human nature, I cannot quite prevent the "claw" of nature from surfacing: destruction, demise, and too often untimely or violent death. I recall seeing a documentary on life in the Amazon, in which a Harpy Eagle seized a large sloth, carrying it to its nest (a remarkable feat in itself, given the size of the sloth): there were fantastic shots of it and the sloth, the sloth raising one of its paws to ward off the eagle's beak..."

The seemingly dead tree that I stood on was felled but not licked; nature does not operate within the matrix of total destruction, that is, only man is the

"Wretch, under [whom] a comfort serves in a

Whirlwind: all

Life death does end and each day dies with sleep"

In my estimation, while I take his observation regarding the brutality of the Harpy Eagle (and by extension, the "claw" of nature) seriously, a thousand strikes at branches (or stem) will not yield the same result as one swift cut at the root: if there's something down deep not dug, it finds a way, and I do not see the "natural" system of nature (and the human) as sufficiently exposed at the surface (if ever). Which is what I mean when I utilize the concept of "Terror," namely, that there is a wide-world sweep into which we, as men whom "fish with the worm that hath ate of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm," need the symbolizing human act for..... what I can't say, but for which must indeed be "the products of multiple experiences, some remembered, most lost in the mists of human timelessness," and yet are never not known (as the "branch" inducing phenomena of the symbol), that is, as something separate from ourselves and our story.
After all, Terry Russell, a brilliant student at the University of California, Berkeley, once wrote a quasi-poetic travel book entitled "On the Loose" in which he stated the following:

"The eloquence of the wilderness is not a pattern for human eloquence. There lives no hardier fool than whoever shouts, "The scene inspired me to set pen to paper." or Burch to canvas, or thumb to lyre. The wilderness inspires nothing but itself. Our babblings and scratchings resume in the den or studio, whenever things resume their comfortable and incorrect proportions."

I agree with the distinction and acknowledge the foolishness of the endeavor— only time will speak to what I've accomplished. Fortunately, I am still young (and not that).....

I strove with none, for none was worth my

strife:

Nature I loved, and next to Nature,

Art:

I warm'd both hands before the fire of Life;

It sinks: and I am ready to depart.

-Walter Savage Landor, "Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher"

Which brings me to a second sight, migrant worker shacks.

Around two weeks ago I took about a 3 hour business trip up Coastal Route 1 to visit a farm in Maine's northern agricultural hinterlands. The ride up was beautiful. Route 1 is known for its attractive scenery and how it meanders through several of the (non-sprawled-suburban) and sleepy little towns of the Maine tourist coast; the road is the main inboard/outbound terminal for Acadia National Park, and you get the impression that it was designed as such. Upon the conclusion of my farm business and not wanting to see the same sights twice (as such is my prerogative), I followed rural route 9 to Bangor with the intention of riding Interstate 95 back down towards Augusta. The local way of travel proved far more revealing. About 5 miles beyond the orbit of Bar Harbor (the capital of Acadia), a second Maine of ever-dwindling people and money emerged. Route 9 replaced the beautiful bridges, bays and mountains with the desolate sight-blight-scape of rural under-development and poverty: tumbledown houses, broken barns, rusted husks of cars and equipment, and the sneaking sense of the fraudulent wealth of the coast. After about 30 minutes of this type of travel, I entered the heart of "wild blueberry country" and saw, amongst the sprawling fields of low-vine blueberries, hundreds of migrant worker shacks. These chipboard constructed and cheap blue paint places were usually grouped in clusters of probably around 100, each with its own affixed number (for distinction, of course) and surrounded by a perimeter fence of barbed wire. Each hovel looked exactly as the one beside it and all were no larger than perhaps a Saturn sedan with all doors open. That was it: no windows and no plumbing, and discernible infrastructure for food, fuel, or (dareisayit) entertainment. Is such the life of those without money or rights? "The meek shall inherit the Earth." But they will have to work it first, dejectedly. And down the road from this the human face of 99 cent blueberries (for Mcdonald's 2for1dollar pies, no doubt) stood a "full gospel" chapel calling itself the "Church of the Open Bible." I could only ask: what about open eyes? The orphans and widows of your own day are concentrated only a few doors down, beyond the perimeter fence. So we return to the claw of nature? And as we once more return to that Old Eagle, I wonder who is the better hunter and/or rooster aka branch-sitter: man or animal?

"Are you all by yourself?" asked the man and his wife as suddenly I crunched through the spring snow past their house trailer.

Are you all by yourself? Asked the gull.

Are you all by yourself? Asked the stars.

If a man is all by himself on this miraculous Earth, a neighbor is no help.

- Terry Russell

This same letter writing friend also wrote:"Philosophers, west and east, emphasize oneness, whether it is the unity of the individual, the unity of the human kind, he unity of nature, the unity with God; it can even be said that the mind in itself conceiving, judging, and reasoning seeks unity. Unity has been politicized, socialized, deified: all humans are equal, we are one all embracing community, we belong to one God. Yes, and yet I experience as much difference as the unity being expatiated and almost demanded of us."
And quotes:

"There is no god to be known if it not

Become the human solitary soul,

Dazed, wandering, in a wilderness, one

Mind self-reflecting, seeking, longing

For a cross to climb, to be nailed into."

Perhaps then the only meaningful connection open to mankind (that is, the inheritors of this Earth) is the mindful recognition of our journey towards the graveyard: some may be glorified to Golgotha and some placed in the pauper's field, but still, we must all make it there first. And we will, as men and women sentenced to dwell in the decay of drawn down (and numbered) days. But until then we must

Leave: Part of ourselves.

Take: sand in our cuffs, rocks, shells,

moss acorns, driftwood, cones, pebbles,

flowers,

Photographs.

But is the picture a tenth of the thing?

A hundredth?

Is it ant without the smell and salt

breeze and the yellow warmth when the fog lifts?

Oh! but I got all that, too.

It is exposed for ever on the sensitive

emulsion sheet

of my mind.

So why do we do it?
　

A Gulling Sight.

Last week, I spent my twilight hours cycling. When “the moment” impressed me to stop, pell-mell, as my destination and direction were uncertain and moved merely via the road before (beyond?) and the force within, I came upon a man-made escarpment, whose concrete stations abutted the local water reservoir. Dismounting, I dangled my legs over the edge of the water line and observed the scene before me: waterfowl were about business, their grace and form suggesting a certain playful-ness of spirit that further exaggerated their distance beyond “solid ground.” Peering further, I spotted a rather large bird break out from a copse of trees across the waterway. He made several large and high flown circles above the zone and unexpectedly dive-bombed the surface. Emerging soon after from the fresh foam froth he had created, a fish squirmed in his powerful talons; up-away did the wide wings beat to its nest, apparently crested upon the crown of that very same copse of trees. A wayfarer, who snatched upon my place without me knowing, soon said: “Ofspry; beautiful bird. Their vision is very good and they can see everything.” I nodded and watched the Ofspry crowd its nest and feed: what, I couldn't judge, but I left the bank and resumed my journey assuming that something of his had been satisfied.

In the scene of Treplev's play, Act I of Chekov's “The Sea Gull:”

Treplev:...oh venerable shadows of olden days, ye shades that float over this lake at night, lull us to sleep and bring us dreams of what will be in two hundred thousand years....”

Nina: “Men, lions, eagles, and partridges, horned deer, geese, spiders, and the silent fish of the deep, starfish and creatures which cannot be seen by the eye—all living things, all living things, all living things, having completed their cycle of sorrow, are now extinct.....all living creatures have turned to dust and the eternal matter has transformed them....while the souls of all beings have been merged into one soul....In me the consciousness of men is fused with the instincts of the animals.

...................................................................................................................

Nina: I am alone. Once in a hundred years I open my lips to speak....I know not what I am nor lies before me. All I know is that I am destined to struggle.

.....................................................................................................................

Nina, to Trigorin: It's a strange play, isnt it?

Trigorin: I didn't understand a word of it, but I enjoyed watching it...There must be a lot of fish in that lake.

As I read this play I wondered, to Thomas Hardy's once poeticized “All Enacting Might,” if “he”—this “Might” was “speaking in symbols,” in the symbol of the Ofspry, as Treplev was to Nina in the images of both the dead bird and the rattle-trap “philosophy” of his (apparently) unappreciated master work. What was it that I saw in those waning stretches of daylight? The bird, a beast of prey, flew (not on waxed wings) and achieved the satisfaction of his immediate desire; which, from my (and the other's) perspective as an observer, was a beautiful event—or at least one worthy of exclamation. Point being, it seems that it is not only I, nor you, nor “him” which works in symbols, but rather all Nature and her players, which as far as expression is concerned, speaks, neither revealing nor concealing. What then, is next? The deed? The force?

I'd say: the Terror (The will to be, the desire to be)?---- how would Blanche Dubois respond?

The Greek mythos Io, from Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, stated:

“My Father of these fears that walked in darkness,

And many times to Pytho and Dodona

He sent his sacred missioners, to inquire

How, or by deed or word, he might conform

To the high will and pleasure of the Gods.

And they returned with slippery oracles.”

Prometheus was the “man-loving” Titan who not only stole the blessings of fire from the Olympians for the benefit of mankind, but also, through bestowing “all manner of arts to men,” took, in his own words, “from man expectancy of death,” consummated through “blind hope planted in the heart of him (man).” Io, from this Pantheon, was a priestess of Hera who was raped by Zeus, who subsequently changed her into a heifer in order to escape the wrath of his consort, Hera. She was later loosed by the Gods to roam the world, forever stung by a maddening gadfly. A woman of neither word nor deed, her fate, ominously hinted at by the “slippery” Pythian and Dodonic Oracles, could not be avoided. Seeking comfort and finding it not, she fled the Bound Prometheus exclaiming:

“It beats upon my brain—the burning wind

That Madness blows!

It pricks—the barb, the hook not forged with heat,

The Gadfly dart!

Against my ribs with thud of trampling feet

Hammers my heart!

And like a bowling wheel mine eyeballs spin,

And I am flung

By fierce winds from my course, nor can rein in My frantic tongue

That raves I know not what!--a random tide

Of words—a froth

Of muddied waters buffeting the wide,

High crested, hateful wave of run and God's

wrath!

I've examined my past purpose: from theology, to philosophy, later to philosophy and literature, and finally to farming (and literature and philosophy; probably theology). I see myself as “searching for her or his home” and I am not taking the later-Wittgenstein approach of thwarting the impulse towards finding unity. I consider my present biography as the “changing expression of the goal,” this meaning that the goal is not that which changes, but rather the journey towards it. Is this “harmony” perhaps inauthentic? Maybe, but I do not believe that a cord of Gordian knots should only be used as a tool for breaking necks. Bounded-ness, as it were, can serve its purpose well as a bedrock for steadfast-ness, a trait taken to task within the long-drawn days of our lives. I agree with the thought that “even knowing what it [the goal of one's life] is may take years of a person's adult life,” but I am sometimes not all that sure where one should go from there. Our friend Ahab took this trait to its adamantine extreme, and although I can't condone the purpose in his pursuing, I do respect the measure of his monomania. Ultimately, his sinking into the abyss may suggest a lack of community (communion?), but not personality (character). The Devil, therefore, does he linger? A criticism of Goethe's  “too many manifestations of Mephistopheles in various guises” is reasonable, but I (my inner Faust) typically sees him singularly, as what I don't want (the office) or what I couldn't have (school?). Here I may have mixed up laboring and seeking, in which event I only have myself to blame. But youth, being what it is, has not yet been wasted (would Joseph Conrad agree?). So again I am and remain “perplexed;” So in the beginning was........

I must here mention that I had purchased my copy of The Sea Gull from an estate sale in Pittsburgh. The former owner, a Miss. Margie Mermelstein of Northwestern, class of 1963, wrote on the opening page of the play the following: “Comedy— Absurd--- Meant to be funny.” Where she got that from Lord only knows.

Pause for Poetry.

Some poems, written in another time.

Thou


If cemeteries could give up their secrets

    Do you suppose the tombs would talk?

If gravestones presented all their findings

    Would we who are yet unburied, walk;

Down, towards the plain of understanding

        Beyond all knowledge, thought and masquerading.



To a place past the briars

    And towards a land whose liars

Absent themselves beneath the canopy--

Would we, yet groundlings,
            Towards the sky to see?



And would that place bring heat and sun

    Or burn us as to yet undone?


Ahh it seems too cruel a state

That those now sleeping prove quite more awake

Than those whose lungs still yet must take;

                    Breath.


Really it is but the light we seek.

That anchors us in prefect meek
                ness as before the stone.

                            Calling out to those in blessed home.


Perhaps therefore the statement  must be:

“Not unto us but instead,

            To thee. “


....................................................................................................................................................

Chronos

“I am different, don't you see?”

“You cannot be but be.”

And so the brass swings back and forth

for all eternity!

Pairs of hands move silently-

across the face: so it goes.

And what is dawn but a risen light,

to view what's sunk below.

What shall the chimes and switches say

when called upon the hour?

“That you woke and slept then woke again,

giving time its charnel power.”

Yet O thou clock thou seest it dimly

but in the only way thine can.

Today will say that I have life

and with history I'll stand!

............................................................................................................................................................

Friends

To whom do I owe this most esteemed pleasure?

That my hope has been contained to such limited measure

That my dreams have been robbed and made to sour

That my promise seems burnt upon the shifts and the hours.

“There, there o troubled perhaps its not so bad; you may find life in the life since had.

Why hope is but a fancy

And those dreams you speak a haze

And perhaps promise is nothing more than an impossible maze.”

“Assuredly answers won’t come with the introduction of questions

But bring their solutions in cascading perfections.”

Well I’ll tell you my friend I think I’m starting to see

That the one who knows the least

Is me.

Art And Meaning

"In the beginning was the Word"--thus the text.

Who helps me on? already I'm perplexed.

I cannot grant the word such sovereign power.

I must translate it in a different way

if I am illuminated by the spirit....

the spirit speaks! and lo, the way is freed,

I calmly write:

"In the beginning was the Deed."

"A simple, untroubled life is what I want; that is what I have here, Father; and I have been happy."

- from Euripides' "Ion" 

Letterhead

I want to share excerpts from a letter that I wrote a good friend this week. Certain parts are redacted.

Your letter and last email were welcome words that I've taken to stand as gifts received in prelude to an as-of -yet unnamed occasion worthy of celebration. To what could I be referring? I'm not sure, although I expect some sort of “happening” to rise up out of the formerly frosted soil, freshly prepared and seeded. It has been my profit in reaching up to the moment of expectation, where one draws down near neat planted beds in all manner of brown and post-wintertime, but should (or can) I say anything more about it? Must I concern myself with seeding when there's still so much to harvest? Furthermore, is not soil anything more than the residues of a recycled world brittled and broken down into the stuff that all new things are made of? Can I expect a substance such as that to provide any sort of shelter to which whatever requires it? Only time will tell whether the seeds that I've sown were ones worthy of the fruits that my labor (thus far) has required. In any event, may the roots dig deep if the branches brag a bounty capable of satisfying my appetite for “all things new.”

Simply put, its been hard for me to see just what Maine (my journey?) has meant thus far.

As I had mentioned in my last email, things are both very different and very similar to what I left in Pittsburgh. The work is new, even in some cases exciting, and I am learning much about what it means to be a farmer, a “career” path that I remain (if not more so) interested in pursuing. Yet a surprising number of habits (if that's what they can be called) that I took to be the conditions of a more urban and unsatisfying lifestyle remain. These habits, as they pursue me across time, space, and place have challenged me into a more sober appraisal of myself and my motives. You wrote in your April 13^th letter that “I envy you the adventure you are having, though my kind of adventure at more or less your age was much less a choice in the service of mankind,” continuing, “I would of course like to know, once you have spent time living there, if you find greater peace of mind in walking or bicycling through the countryside, and if by planting seeds or seedlings you find a sense of self you had never previously experienced.” In answer, I believe that I have begun to “find a new sense of self” quite unlike what I had expected prior and yet it seems as though I've traveled over 1000 miles so simply to pierce the mere thickness of my skin, which in terms of cost, while questionable, has so far been the best bargain my economy has endeavored to purchase. Come what may, I'm here hearing the birds and “seeing the light” of the sun in ways unwitnessed at home, abroad. Therefore my “discoveries” if revealing, will hopefully make all the pain of leaving friends (you included), family, and pre-conceptions worthwhile. As they say “the spirit is willing but the flesh is so weak.”.... but then again aren't we not “by the stripes of wounds, healed?”

If one, in the words of Thoreau, were to keep “three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society,” my own abode would have 3, yet one would find 2 typically empty; in truth such is the case with regard to the appointment of my chairs. Would I say that I'm lonely? As with most of what I've been through, Yes and No. I sometimes find the solitude most welcome, as it gives me the space I need to further my studies into the realms of the interior (oh really?). Thoreau himself preceded the above quoted analogue for community by stating “Why should one feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky way? What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to another.” In many cases, a single chair will (and does) do. But as you know me well and even once described me as “gregarious,” I admit that I do sometimes wish for another individual. Such seems the way of any new environment, but I do not blame the countryside for not offering any further guests at the moment. The chairs remain in place more in expectation than for any other purpose.

I have just finished reading Walter Arndt's translation of Goethe's Faust and have enjoyed it a great deal. Are you acquainted with the story and of Goethe's take on the Faustian bargain? In my opinion, Goethe's subsequent recasting of the myth outside its traditional rubric of a simple conjurer's “deal with the devil” for wealth and power, his Faust constitutes one of the most powerful and early literary examples of the archetypal human experience.

In the moment right prior to his Wager (pact) with Mephistopheles (Satan), Faust states:

“My Curse I hurl on all that spangles

The mind with dazzling make-belief,

With lures and blandishments entangles

The soul within this cave of grief!

Accursed, to start, the smug delusion

Whereby the mind itself ensnares!”

Cursed, brash phenomenal intrusion

That blinds the sense unawares!

Cursed, what in lying dreams assures us

Of name and glory past the grave!

Cursed, pride of ownership that lures us

Through wife and children, plow and slave!

Accursed be Mammon, when his treasure

To deeds of daring eggs us on,

For idle self-indulgent leisure

Spreads a luxurious divan!

Cursed be the balsam of the grape!

Curesed, highest prize of lovers' thrall!

A curse on faith! A curse on hope!

A cure on patience, above all!”

And the wager itself:

“Faust: Beyond to me makes little matter;

If once this earthly world you shatter,

The next may rise when this has passed.

It is from out this earth my pleasure spring,

It is this sun shines on my suffering;

If once from these I dram asunder,

Then come to pass what will and must.

I do not further choose to wonder

If hate may then be felt or love,

or whether in those regions yonder

They still know nether or above.

Mephistopheles: So minded, you may dare with fitness.

Engage yourself; these days you are to witness

Examples of my pleasing arts galore.

I'll give you what no man has seen before.

Faust: What is, poor devil, in your giving?

Has even human mind in its high striving

Been comprehended by the likes of you?

What's yours but food unsating, the red hue

of gold which, shifting and untrue,

Quicksilver will like through the fingers run,

A game which always stays unwon,

A girl who at my very breast

Trades winks already with another's eyes,

but honor's fair and godly zest

Which like a meteor flares and dies?

Show me the fruit which, still unplucked, will rot,

Trees freshly green with every day's renewal!

Mephistopheles:such a commission daunts me not,

I can provide that sort of jewel.

But nonetheless, there comes a time, my friend,

When good things savored at our east give pleasure.

Faust: Should ever I take ease upon a bed of leisure,

May that same moment mark my end!

When first by flattery you lull me

Into a smug complacency,

When with indulgence you can gull me

Let that day be the last for me!

This is my wager!”

Literary scholar Cyrus Hamlin has commented that “What Faust has in mind as the condition for his wager is not only a sense of satisfaction, which would complete and negate his striving, but also an absolute fulfillment of desire, where the temporal and experiential process involved in such striving would e gathered together within such a single moment, so that time itself would transcend,” and ultimately, “what unites the drama of Faust as a whole is the fundamental attempt by Faust to comprehend human existence in its constantly varying temporal dimensions and its constant dependence on shifting forces of mind and will, which motivate all action and thought, with reference to some ultimate and absolute power of spirit or divinity, either within nature and thus accessible to human experience or else above and beyond the natural world, transcending all knowledge and understanding.” I see some of Faust in me and wonder, as far as the language of my third paragraph is concerned, if I've made any infernal bargains myself (surely.... not?).

Your descriptions of the 2 movies were very interesting. As you correctly surmised, I would have found Il Posto or The Sounds of Trumpets a worthwhile watch. I wonder: does the film end on a positive note and did the character of the office clerk find what he was looking for? Or like Faust (and even Ulysses, at least as far as Dante's cosmology was concerned) was his striving the force behind an undoing? I should point out that in Goethe's interpretation of the myth, Faust was eventually saved from damnation because in the words of a heavenly chorus of Angels:

“Pure Spirits' peer, from evil coil

He was vouchsafed exemption;

“Whoever strives in ceaseless toil,

him we may grand redemption.”

And when on high, transfigured love

Has added intercession,

The blest will throng to him above

With welcoming compassion.”

I apologize for the ambiguity but I am in transition; I remain committed to forward furtherances into the mysteries of this place.

For now, I leave you with a poem written by a good friend of mine from the bank, Josh Andreyo:

Heavy Spring

The stripped chest, heavy like soaked cloth.

Arms all green in

Springtime's spongemoss

Wet and cool in the undersides (where)

A newborn bettle and a bird, lay eyeing

One another near an exposed, thawed boned elbow.

Winter's old, comfortable snow

Entirely gone.

And quick in that sunlight too.

Morbid melting, really.

I found at my feet today.

At my rocky, rooty trunkfeet.

(nothing is the same now)

We hope for snow

to bring hope soon.

Chapter 1

The last 2 weeks have been interesting, fit with a rash of different feelings and (dare-i-say-it) opportunities. While I can't form (nor stand on) any of the pseduo-conclusions of the experience thus far, a few flitting and spectral thoughts have come to house themselves within the vacated portions my crowding (and rapidly more central) consciousness; work (physical labor) has become the name of the game, retention its score, and meaning the purpose for playing. I feel as though I'm "winning," but whose the one to say? I don't have any community [a crowd of witnesses?] to speak of as of yet (unless the poets and artists I brought up with me can be considered as any society), but a co-worker is soon on the way, with more to come in her wake.

In conclusion, I wake up to something both quite unlike yet very similar to what I rose with in Pittsburgh. I wasn't seeking an escape persay, but definitely something different, which is what this has been.

As I was riding back to town the other day, as the evening's fleeting rays marched significantly from twilight, I was struck with the sun's demands upon the place: it postured its waning energies to the perfect picture of warfare, with auroral artillery streaked across the sky and it's celestial corps (and core) engaged in a regretted retreat against the oncoming threats of darkness. As That Star declined to the horizon against the force of its upcoming antipode, I couldn't help but feel certain not only of its return, but also of the reclamation of its throne among that first order of terrestrial stardom, the dawn to herald once more the gifts of its rule upon the reclaimed realm that lay below. True to form, I was greeted with a fantastic sunrise the following morn.

In going:

Mephistopheles (the devil and in the robe of a scholar--Faust's), to a student, requesting advice upon his entrance to the university:

"Cheer up! Throw over all reflection,
and off into the world post-haste!
Take it from me; the slave of introspection
Is like a beast on arid waste
By some foul fiend led round and round,
While, all about, green meadow lands abound."