Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 13:30:29 -0800
Subject: being and nothingness


John Foster wrote:

>Only being in love of what is complete is attitude. Love is the attitude
>of >respect. Love as attitude is life affirming life.


  Aphorism # 334 from Die froliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science)

                     One must learn to love.
---  This is what happens to us in music: First one has to learn to hear a
figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate it and
delimit it as a separate life. Then it requires some exertion and good will
to tolerate it in spite of its strangeness, to be patient with its
appearance and expression, and kindhearted about its oddity. Finally there
comes a moment when we are used to it, when we wait for it, when we sense
that we should miss it if it were missing; and now it continues to compel
and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble and enraptured
lovers who desire nothing better from the world than it and only it.
     But that is what happens to us not only in music. That is how we have
learned to love  all things that we now love. In the end we are always
rewarded for our good will, our patience, fairmindedness, and gentleness
with what is strange; gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a
new and indescribable beauty. That is its thanks for our hospitality. Even
those who love themselves will have learned it in this way; for there is no
other way. Love, too, has to be learned. ---
---------------

One thing i didn't like about your poem mr. Foster was it ended about
60,000 lines too soon. If that was chapter one, i'd sure like to read a few
more. It certainly has the elements i like, in terms of form, content,
style and, and, and one other word which i can't seem to put my finger on
right now; no, not 'sentiment', but something, something, - - - - -
nomadic? ? connecting? ?
---

Ariosto Raggo's quote of Wallace Stevens' line on 'snowman thought', "And,
nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that
is." (p. 9 _The Complete Poems_), wow!

The nothing that is something, whose essence is absence of essence,
absentness. Nothing as a force, a 'for-itself', 'coiled like a worm at the
heart of Being'. Good ol Sartre.

To two Northern stars rising I say, Amor fati!
---

kj





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