Which Starts with Questions of Cookies and Ends with Questions of Love. Sort of a Reverse Proust. Not That I've Read Proust.

05/27/2008 6:55 AM – 7:42 AM

And now what state am I in that I think home-made cookies are better tasting that store-bought ones? Unless the store-bought ones are expensive. Some habits of thought change some do not. Old proclivities that I thought quelled rise and then fall away, as if only to let me know that they remain.

But I do not think man a constant thing. At least men of my sort. It is as if we were constructed of fairly consistent boxes, but what those boxes contain changes from day to day or year to year. I find myself in the categorical position of Kant but modified. I’m not drawn to Kant. He was a bad writer, so thick as to be almost nothing more than a set of guts to be read into, a mere augury. But is that neither here nor there? And I ran last night for the first time in four days. I felt both the good effects of rest and the ill effects of ceasing the exercise for even that period of time. One can reach a conclusion by reason and force one to it by will, but the rewards must be emotional, reason counting nothing either pleasant or unpleasant.

I find my self desiring love again. The last case came and went without much comment. But I would deign that a matter of inaction on my part. It is one thing to play with a love as a pretty thought while one is alone, quite another thing to pursue and make it known to the world. Or even the object of one’s affection. But for now, I am content. Twenty-eight years of study and I still don’t know what the she that is She should be. The general survey of the pertinent text would leave one to hold: similarity of basic intelligence, similarity of basic world-view and SOP, and the ability to disagree without becoming vicious or disdainful. The last is one that we can work on, the first two a result of genetics and experience. But still there is that need to know that you do have to work on it. There is a girl I know who finds much wrong with the world and will speak at length about it. Never once have I heard her admit that the fault was her own, even for matters soon forgotten. I, self-important as I am, at least can see that the problem is often a matter of my own indifference or perspective. And I know a girl who sees much wrong, but finds it to most often be a result of her own inadequacies. That is inaccurate as well. The world often is as it is and we are often what we are. We must learn to accept this. The problem that arises is that love requires, yes, acceptance where differences exist, but also a similarity that allows for that trust which guides one to intimacy. I suppose that there have existed millions of perfectly good marriages since marriage began which didn’t require more than a cosmetic smudge of intimacy, but I haven’t been waiting twenty-eight years for that. At thirty-three Montaigne married. At that same age both Jesus and Alexander died. The hard questions that I began asking of love at seventeen, I still ask. Which comes first, the bird or the nest? Beloved movies aside, of what value are you? Should you bring peace or challenge? Do you pull up, down or not at all? Will you add strength to my life or merely add weight to it? What do you cost? Is there a point after which you will not arrive? How do you arrive? How is it that you leave? And how do I make you stay? But perhaps these questions are mere academic sophistry, asked not to gain knowledge but to stall for time. Yes, I put it on a pedestal, but everyone should have something up there, else we become crude and cheap things, our lives those nasty, brutish and short things of the pessimist’s imagination.