בְּחַיֵּיכוֹן וּבְיוֹמֵיכוֹן
A Lament for the Living
We wake, we drink coffee. Some of us smoke cigarettes. Some of us drink juice or take other drugs. Whichever it is, we wake up. Personally, I invest much effort in staying asleep, which feels guilty like a contemptuous and ungrateful rejection of the gift that the magic that the day can provide. Even if that magic is only a skeleton, a sketch for the divine notions I experience in sleep. My favorite time.
Am I different? No more than anyone else. Am I well-adjusted? That's unnecessary rhetoric.
Oscar Wilde said:
"God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say* is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too."
I like Oscar Wilde. I feel a bond when I see his jaded and beautiful levity.
* Can't source O. Wilde's bathroom wall graffiti on that.
"No human thing is of serious importance."
Plato's The Republic, X, 604-C works well though.
Am I different? No more than anyone else. Am I well-adjusted? That's unnecessary rhetoric.
Oscar Wilde said:
"God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say* is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too."
I like Oscar Wilde. I feel a bond when I see his jaded and beautiful levity.
* Can't source O. Wilde's bathroom wall graffiti on that.
"No human thing is of serious importance."
Plato's The Republic, X, 604-C works well though.
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