November 2021
A view (53)
15 November 2021, around 17.10.
æquanimities
19 November 2021, around 14.30.
τὸ δὲ σκότος ἐκλείποντος τοῦ φωτὸς γίνεται.
For darkness follows when light fails.
The sense of withdrawing into oneself, running to ground. A step away from easy definitions, the lineæ abscissæ of demographic plots, towards abscission – even so it shall be cut off, as someone said, and left to iniquity.
A week ago, I had wanted to say that I miss the easy rituals of human contact, but I don’t. The minor vexation of waiting in line for another’s indecision or rudeness or excess is not, for the moment, remote – one can enjoy it any day of the week, along with the other shared inanities of the agora. The murmuration of malcontent. Rather, I miss the rituals of friendly contact – letters, texts, conversations, shared anxieties and joys. The simulacra – likes, comments, the heady binary of attention (present/absent) – which for a time seemed sufficient (or at the very least a potential window to the real), have palled, their emptiness apparent, the windows too obviously dark, and the reflection failing to satisfy.
24.xi.2021
24 November 2021, around 9.10.
Snow on the distant ridge (not shown).
mellowing
24 November 2021, around 9.47.
Knowledge of values, in fact, is a matter of direct insight, like seeing that the sky is blue, the grass green. It does not consist of pieces of information that can be handed from one mind to another. In the last resort, every individual must see and judge for himself what it is good for him to do. […] A man perfect in self-knowledge can tell when his own vision of what is good is clear; he cannot see into another’s mind and tell whether his vision is clear.