Oy! I haven’t published anything recently of worth, I know and I am sorry. As that ancient Hellen, he who lost his mind and slaughtered innocent animals more suited for the sacrificial altar to the pantheon of sublime gods than for such an act of lunacy, once cried, “Aïe! Aïe!” so too I cry and groan for there is nothing else I can do to expiate. And since there are no gods to pour libations to or fall prostate supplicating pardon for imaginary sins, so I must too say “Aïe! Aïe!” for my sins and the dearth of such beings. Besides, what free man needs God? But I have the suspicion that the proper and more prudent question is, am I free?
I shrug it off. I haven’t time to ask myself such things, nor do I have time to play with words. Language liberates and encarcerates. What is all this to me! Nonsense, tout cela c’est de la cochonnerie! Oh how à la Dostoevsky.
Sometimes I fear that I too will suffer the fate of the Word, for I suffer the travails of the Word incarnate. Oh language you are my temple! I am your humble suppliant. Fill my emptiness with knowledge. Culminate the pain.
That great genius who is surrounded by his Master and other men of genius, but purportedly, of inferior genius postulates the centre of the antipodes, of the extremes as the proper point. So between knowledge and myth. But can one have knowledge? Our tool is language and language is ellusive like felicity, like Fortuna … that sacrosanct Goddess that reminds man of his mortality, of his humanity. Fool he who forgets the oscillations of the human life.
My joy is to play with words, to change them but render their alteration provisional and not eternal. To allude to an archaic signification is beyond my control; I revel in it like man revels in his stupidity. But man is not free! Ah my, I think you’ve solved the mystery! Ahah!
Language creates reality:
In the beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God.
What a conundrum. The Word existed first, this primordial idea must be taken a priori, because it is primordial. Good. Now the Word was with God, so then we must assume by association that as Word:God :: Beginning:Word ipso facto Beginning:God. So both God and Word are at the beginning … but then this implies that there are two beings, two ideas at the beginning. Problem? No, for the Word is God. So it seems Word and God are qualities of God. But why would God have two qualities, or three if one includes the other member of the triumvirate? But such is the power of words, and such is the credulity of man that Christianity is a monotheistic religion. Ah the power of the Word!
But what’s it to me? It’s all waffles. No concern of mine. I’m more concerned with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, an endeavor that is consuming my time and energy. I am exhausted … oh!
But I am afflicted by the question I posed earlier, am I free? The Platonist would say no, after all the soul is incarcerated in the body, this ephemeral and carnal prison that has the ability to defile the soul. The Hellenic edifice of Truth is based upon the existence of the soul.
Juan: Sókrates! Stop! Your whole system is absurd. You have yet to prove the existence of the soul.
Socrates: You must take it a priori.
Juan: pánu gár. But therein lies the problem. It lies on an initial assumption that cannot be proved but its validity must be postulated.
Socrates: We must be pragmatic.
Juan: Yes, that’s all pretty, like loving one another. Pretty indeed, how peripatetic of you my dear.
Socrates: Indeed my young friend.
I’m afraid that unlike my heroes, I cannot divide myself into body and soul for I suspect that if ever they were two separate entitites, they are so fused in a Holy Duality that they are One now. Nor do I feel inclined to divide the soul into three parts and bestow the quality of the Intellect on an imaginary thing as is the Soul. Oh men of genius, help me. I am at a loss …. I am not free yet I needn’t a God! Hah heretic!