John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

It is so wonderful when a single small action tells so much about a person’s character: the way a person moves in the subway when seeing another person move to find a seat can say volumes about a person.

Yet one goes on hearing so much talk about how one does not know a person quickly. Is this perhaps only because most are not paying attention? Is perhaps the truth about human beings the easiest thing to discover in the world, surrounding us as constantly as the air itself? and our only failing is that we refuse to open our mouths and breath in?

This song still can bring tears to my eyes — and that makes me very happy.

Your hands didn’t move, but neither did mine: New Year’s will bring. So much to say, but nothing comes out right — both of us left without words, both of us lost in this world. It’s softer than ever before. And you were the outline of everything you would become. The keeper of these hands — to hold you now — it is a far cry more than anything that I deserve. I’m waiting to give you whatever the world may bring. I’ll give you my life cause I don’t own anything. It seems like a bottle was all that I had until now. I’ll give you my life if you’d give me yours somehow. Your hand didn’t move and neither did mine: New Year’s will bring me to you. I’m waiting to give you whatever the world may bring. I’ll give you my life cause I don’t own anything. Seemed like the bottle was all that I had until now. I’ll give you my life if you’ll give me yours somehow.¹

1. Further Seems Further : The Moon Is Down : A New Year’s Project↩

You know what sucks? Reading lyrics and finding that what you’ve thought you’ve been hearing for so long is not the actual lyrics — and the actual lyrics are much worse than your imagined version.

Let’s start to introduce a modern typology of human beings. We’ll begin with the type I’ll hereafter call the freedthinker.

The freedthinker is distinguished by several simple features: first, above average intelligence being utterly wasted and going without proper training (hence, frequently, the freedthinker is found among the mass of Masters and Doctoral students in the humanities); second, the freedthinker invariably has strange, novel beliefs that contradict what everyone — from the lowliest couch potato to the most sophisticated physicist — believes: these beliefs always have a quality of naive believability, but are seldom supported by research or careful argument. Third, the freedthinker has considerable scorn both for established facts and established modes of reasoning — he generally prefers his own forms of reasoning: modus sycophans, modus demagogus and modus out and out fucking lying.

He is distinguished by his use of common sense reasoning in all of those spheres of knowledge where common sense has proven inadequate: physics, biology, chemisty and so on. This, of course, is to be expected as using methods beyond common sense would require him to join into a community of scientists that might make his thinking less free: he might put himself at risk of becoming an enslaved thinker.

The freedthinker also has a preference for uncommon facts — that is to say, “facts” of which somehow only he is aware.

Now, the freedthinker is a unique type in that the solution to the freedthinker’s vices is already well-known: formal and unambiguous rules of reasoning along with accepted sources of “fact”. Yet, it is from this solution — this restriction, that is — that the freedthinker has been freed.

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty–¹

God, what a beautiful passage. The words drip with rage as if the speaker were spitting on his hearer with his words.

1. William Shakespeare : Hamlet : 3.4.92-95↩

One sees so many boyfriend applications, I thought I would add one of my own. A prospective girlfriend should

1. Revere Shai Hulud.

2. Regard all forms of selfishness as utterly evil.

3. Be capable of winning a duel.

In short, my preferred applicants would be Fremen. I do also like Caladanian girls though.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thought never to heaven go.¹

1. William Shakespeare : Hamlet : ↩

You will never think he’s wrong. She will never feel quite right.

Reverse the genders in that line and you get a statement true equally often and vastly more unpopular since it is popular to view women as natural victims and deeply unpopular to view them as perpetrators.

How much are some branches of feminism to blame for perpetuating — or perhaps even promoting– an image of woman as an inevitable victim, as an innnocent surrounded on all sides by predators?

Revenge is sweeter than honey.

Polonius: ‘Tis too much proved that with devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.
Claudius: O, ’tis too true. (Aside) How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art, is not more ugly to the thing that helps it than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden!

How often one hears talk of the difficulty of virtue out of the mouths of villains in Shakespeare! And how much guilt Claudius bears, yet he will not right his wrongs.

Hamlet is too hard a work for me to understand, so filled with condemnation, then suddenly understanding, then pity — and then despair. The only firm point I feel sure one take out of Shakespeare is that there is no hope, that “ripeness is all.”