When a day has gone very badly, when clouds pelt tears unceasingly, so unavoidably, that it seems nothing could possibly interrupt the downpour, the soft but firm tone of a low octave in G comes through from the deep, to rupture the darkness.

Thus, it begins.

Music: simply, purely. A continuous, cyclical line that’s not extended or not abbreviated, but grows, satisfying in itself, unmistakably beautiful.

There is no announcement. Nothing imposed. It does not arrive from above, but seems to emerge from within its own movement, as though the line had been there already, waiting to be heard.

It is an unassuming piece, yet it occupies a singular place in the musical world: universally recognized and accepted.

It belongs to what we call the canon. A piece of music that feels settled, resolved, assured. Even something close to sacred.

If beauty exists beyond preference, if it can be encountered rather than assigned, then this music approaches it directly.

And for that very reason, it is so rarely examined for what it actually does.

It offers an aural message.

**

Let there be life.

A path materializes before you.

Draw in the first breath.

Become conscious.

The journey is starting.

Awakening from the notes themselves.

Not just their arrangement but their very spirit.

Its timbres invoke coming into being.

Commencing.

That is why it became mine.

The first piece I chose to record and release.

My first breath and movement into professional musical life.

I enter it as a musician, an artist, an interpreter.

***

My performance is an expression of coming into being and then — becoming alive.

Calm but immense. Emergence into the world.

The performance communicates that to be alive is to be in perpetual motion.

As human beings we tend to move at a steady tempo. We also reserve the right to slow or accelerate, to sway or stretch, as the spirit of the music moves us.

Rubato is a universal law of all aural art.

From tempo, we shift to tone. How heaviness or lightness, attack and manner of release, legato or staccato, pedal or dry, give shape to the music — and resonate beyond verbal communication.

My performance commits care to the score for guidance, without limiting or forbidding, but rather welcoming divergence and spontaneity. The score provides grounding and assurance; it is not a set of moral laws.

May each note carry its expression outward.

The goal: to transport you to another register.

****

The sound follows these principles.

It resists uniformity.

It is full and resonant as the music develops. The melodic line explores the paradox of change within its repetitions; of smoothness, unevenness, and singing without excess brightness. The lower register carries weight without becoming dense. The sound space around the instrument remains continuous and open, free of artificial imposition.

Dynamics are lush and varied, while also holding their place. The sound, loud or soft, retains its shape. Always audible, left free to rise and fall according to the movement of the line.

What results is a coherent surface rather than a perfected one. Something that can hold variation, sustain tension, and still return to rest.

*****

Something new is being attempted here.

Without impositions, critiques, corrections, or purifications. These are not at play. What I pursue arises through the very act of playing.

In this piece, I use the Myra Hess transcription, as most do. But from that point forward, the movement follows what, to me, the music itself seems to require.

The tempo does not remain static. It shifts, almost imperceptibly, with each repetition of the music, as the line rises toward the apex.

When we reach the climax, it does not simply arrive as impact.

It opens:

Suspended for a moment, then released. Radiant. Life bursting forth. The fullness of breath, desire, and joy. Then folding back into the stillness from which it emerged.

But changed. Something has happened:

The arc completes itself by a return to its beginning, this time with experience.

This is the first piece in my forthcoming release, Interpretations, Volume I: Bach.

It does not present the whole.

It opens it.

Listen quietly. But also openly.

Carefully.

At ease.

Let it unfold.

May 19, 2026.

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1

The revolution starts again,

Another year, another number,

Added on, commemorating Earth’s rotation ‘round the sun.

2

A rather silly moment

we indulge in,

Taking time to state once more

A resolution that

the lot of us are bound to break.

It’s arbitrary, even crude;

Irresolute.

For every day, at any moment,

we are free to bind ourselves to promises,

then in the next, to let them die.

In earnest, though,

we should be made to

answer for them…

Often, we would rather not.

3

This attitude prepares us

for the disappointments and deceptions,

degradations, harm and hardship

crushingly imposed,

as days progress,

as time unfolds.

But from these impositions,

must we acquiesce?

4

We’re always free to face the consequences

of our promises,

Imposing on ourselves the discipline

to persevere,

to follow through,

Perhaps to bend — but not to break,

To do what’s right for your own sake.

5

Not only yours—

for you, too, live within the world,

And all of us are held together in the fold.

Your choices, promises,

accountability for failings

each have impact

as we act together,

or opposed to one another.

We’re bound up, interwoven

In and through the fabric of the world

and of life itself.

6

The monarch butterfly will flap its wings,

Which generate the smallest wisps of wind;

they swirl and slowly gather,

growing, building, coalescing,

moving ’cross the globe,

expanding, speeding, darkening,

into a raging tempest,

wild and now unleashed,

a drowning, overwhelming flood

of catastrophic force.

But all the while, the butterfly just flaps.

7

Akin, we read of how the kings

Of old would point and execute

Those close or far,

Expand dominion,

Squeeze their peasantry,

Yet dared to call themselves divine.

Some fast, some slow,

All festered devastation.

But like the papillon, their executions

Still reverberate and harm:

They manifested selfishness,

Mistrust and hatred of all others but their own.

(Even of themselves.)

They pillaged, murdered, looted

All they could.

But worst they spun their webs,

Of terror and deceit,

Ensnaring and enslaving all

Unto the whimsy of their moods and lusts.

Across their dynasties

It has been hard to purge their sicknesses—

the waste they laid upon

our spirits and our kind,

infecting our polities right up to present day.

8

Although we did resolve to end their kind,

And gave them to the guillotine,

The vacuums left us ripe for war

and further exploitation,

cruelly at the hands of

their inheritors:

monopolistic money gluttons—

Tech bros, finance titans,

Tycoons of oil, min’ral, seed, and chemical,

The data miners of your privacy,

The lenders, launderers

And lords of real estate.

9

Across the board,

They’re narcissistic vermin freaks,

Diseased with greed,

Who squeeze and squeeze

Who choke the necks of all of us

And squeeze and squeeze

The life, the liberty, the possibility

of happiness,

‘Tis not without good reason that these

Men and women, too, are known as

oligarchs.

10

A blight, they are, upon the human race,

Accelerants of our demise.

11

The hist’ry of humanity

Records us stunted, mutilated,

And manipulated

Into loathing and mistrusting of

the colors, sexes, shapes

And sizes not our own.

To wit:

“The hoipolloi, the riffraff, rabble,

Are mere sheep that bray,

Deserving nothing but the slaughter,

As we have engineered,

But also to enjoy their squirm.

For when some of the peasants steal

each other’s crumbs,

We name that criminal,

Then when the criminals are rounded up

And sent away,

The scraps are theirs,

Still not enough to live,

As we’ve designed.

They whittle and struggle,

Fall to their knees and hope

As they’ve been taught

That all the goods

That we deny

Shall one day fall

Down from on high!”

12

Do you not see the meaning of their falsehoods?

The fork-tongued words

To play you off against your neighbor,

Drive you to a frenzy

And destroy the solidarity

You naturally share?

So turn, instead, the arms and hate

That have been

Forced upon us by these oligarchs;

Take back your health,

your body, spirit, energies, and mind.

For far too long,

we have been taught

to kill each other,

Let us turn them on the perpetrators,

And then lay them down,

Or leave them hanging

so that we then bend the arch

of our existence

finally — and firmly —

to the side of righteousness,

Toward a path for anyone and everyone,

As brothers, and as sisters,

But most importantly

As fellow human beings.

As one, we are a multitude,

And as a multitude we too are one.

13

We’re also taught to love and honor

All the freedoms fought and died for,

Although hitherto these lessons

Culminate in giving us away

To servitude.

Millennia of human slavery must end.

We need to truly live,

to feel, and to experience

What freedom really means:

Its openness, unbound

and its responsibilities,

To liberate those not yet free —

Including ourselves.

To learn to care and lift

Up everyone in need,

For we contain

the best and least of us.

We owe this fight unto each other.

We owe it to ourselves,

To find resolve

To shift from “I, and for myself alone”

To: “Since I’m free, I

Hold my hand out

Beck’ning you to join;

For I am nothing

without you,

“I” does not exist

if not with you,

And then, together,

Each for each of us.

As one,

We reach that state

in which there need not be

A state at all,

When all are free.

For then and only then—

Prosperity made manifest—

Are our hearts made light.

14

It’s in the future, yes,

And there’s much darkness,

Violence, and dread, ahead.

While now is ever here

It’s also ever leaving,

In motion, always,

Onward, forward,

Whether we are in or out,

Or resolute or weak:

There is no option, is no choice,

It’s coming, coming, coming.

Now lend your powers

And your spirit

To the cause

You do believe in,

Consciously,

Or outside your awares.

You’ve read this song,

Awaken now,

Or if not fully ready

For the freedom that you seek

Allow what can be yours,

What can be shared

And should be cared for,

Make a home

Inside your mind,

Of just how good ‘twill be

To open and embrace

Its dignity, respect,

Responsibility and sweet delight.

15

We’re closer now than ever before.

It’s yours to take, to hold.

To be a brother or a sister,

Friend and lover,

Owner, sharer,

Teacher, student,

Servant, master, too.

Held fast and holding fast,

Persisting by just living and

Exerting for the sake of others,

Suffering for your own growth,

And that of others,

The joy, so deep, of inner calm and satisfaction

In your life.

This is my prayèr for the dire times ahead,

Already filled with so much blood and dread;

Persist and live, not just for you

But for your neighbors, too.

16

Now find your voice:

I call upon the Pantheon — the goddess of the aegis —

Invoking her to lend you fire,

To breathe engulfing words

Of heat and power.

To feed the fires within your soul,

Inspiring you to act

And join with open, linkèd arms;

To stand your ground

And push for righteousness,

While knowing well the poisons,

Ever streaming from the god of death,

That long have sapped and maimed

your natural strength and decency.

This is reality; it’s here,

They’re in our neighborhoods,

They’re raiding homes and businesses,

As though they’re destiny.

But they’ve already lost:

For we are one,

Awoken and ignited,

And together we shall win.

17

With every dawn may we instill:

The day is new—

unwritten and untrod;

We are compelled to live

until our breath expires.

So let us fill our lungs

For inspiration, strength, and energy,

To live for what our hearts

And spirits truly seek,

To do our part for each

and every one of us.

It may mean suffering,

It may mean sacrifice,

But we shall grow:

With resolution — revolution.

— Søren Kierkegaard, Journalen, JJ 167

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What happens if someone sees you?
Not merely passing in the opposite direction,
or that brief mutual glance on the street
that makes your body tingle —
but sees you.
Not your skin, nor the color of your eyes,
nor the practiced smile,
but you. Into you.

Have you ever been seen?
Made naked by a stranger?
The sudden realization that this new person knows you,
perceives a still point at the heart of you —
but knows not yet your name.
It took only one glance.

Sometimes the lightning strikes on both sides,
in the same instant.
Then the magnetic pull
cannot be overcome.
It’s beautiful.

This power runs through all of us.
You have the gift of in-sight too —
I know that it has wielded you before,
no less than twice or thrice.

I often wonder what people have seen in me.
I am not easy. I am hidden away.
Each layer of my being contains a lock without a key.
I know not where they are.
I welcome you to try.

You’d see a part of me, but never all:
a color, a shape,
an idea,
a deeply held feeling or belief —
glimmers of myself that ripple into your light,
only to vanish from your view.

I am not insecure. I am not delicate.
I am not secretive, nor shifty.
Ask, and I will answer—truthfully,
and likely far more deeply than you expected.
But the answers to your questions won’t release the locks.
Nothing wholly opens. Nothing is fully revealed.
It cannot be.

It is not possible to say all there is about oneself,
nor all we realize of each other.
We share what we can.
Sometimes we pay dearly for sharing our vulnerabilities.
But we can never share it all.

That is why we’re locked
in ways that cannot be broken
or unlocked;
why nothing is ever fully disclosed;
why we are — and remain — a mystery,
to each other and to ourselves.

And this is part — only a part — of what makes life beautiful:
we share even as we hide,
protect even as we expose,
reveal even as we conceal and cover over.
We remember and forget.
Look back as we move forward.
We learn as we unlearn.

It is why we live.
For either we are living, or we are not.
We cannot hold both life and death at once.
There is no middle ground.
We fight to stay protected from the end,
and so defend ourselves until the end —
with every breath, until we stop.
For only then are we unlocked.
And only then are we not.

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Time,
history specifically,
has become the lens through which human beings measure.

What does this mean?
It means we determine value by time.
The ultimate value — our happiness — especially.

Happiness is the time we put into it,
our participation with it,
for time is what is most valuable to us.
It is non-renewable, for it is ever appearing and disappearing.
We are with it, or we are not,
which is why we value it so highly.

This has become fundamental:
We view not only value but all things through the prism of time.

And thus, time is unjustifiable by reason, by science.
Time transcends reason and science, even space, which endures without us.
It manifests its fundamental value by encountering what’s deepest within us —
our feelings and emotions.
The effects they have upon us: their beauty, unity, disunity, necessity,
that which makes us, us.

All this lies beyond the rational or the scientific.
My very being is at stake.
My being is precious.
I continue to exist or cease to exist.
If I ever want to be happy,
I must, at the very least, exist first.

Fuck rationality.
This is me.
I’m at stake.
I’m precious.
My happiness depends on it.
That is the most fundamental thing —
the foundation of foundations.

That is what value is, ultimately.
And this feeling of ultimacy — of what is most important —
is bound up with how we understand ourselves.
It’s the very core of me.
Beyond the guts of my insides or the caverns of my mind.
Deeper than that.
It’s the truth of who I am,
the understanding of myself,
my truth.

And I want to feel this preciousness all the time.
I don’t want to lose it.
I want it to continue.
I want to live and enjoy it.
I cannot be without it.

I will fight to protect it.
I will fight to preserve it.

Ultimately, I will lose.
For I am destined to die.

And this is why time is how we measure.
Time pulses through all things:
through phenomena, ideas, thoughts and feelings, impulses and drives,
through all movement, good and bad, all of it.

Human beings are rational animals,
and one of the primary proofs of our rationality is our ability to measure.
And so we measure our actions according to our lifelong battle with time.
We measure and judge the actions of others as well — which we call history.

Our lives are making history,
even if the relevance of that history is limited to ourselves.
Or we watch the making of history,
or recount past events as historical artifacts.

The lens of history is omnipresent, overpowering, ingrained
in the way we reflect on our lives and the lives of others.
It has become difficult to think outside of it — or from a different perspective.
Some have argued this is impossible.

The answer is long,
and would take many words to understand that statement,
and many more to answer it.
I will not answer it today.
But if you’ve paid attention, you already sense my position — and thus the truth.

Let’s look at one of the most important truths each of us carries within:
one closely tied to who we are and the extent to which we can be happy.

Love.

If you fall in love,
you recognize a change in yourself that is important, life-altering.
When exactly the moment was is usually unclear,
but the recognition of it is what matters.
The haziness is part of love’s mystique.

The longer you’re in love,
the longer this realization becomes part of you — and the love grows.
It often blossoms, from being in love to being grown in love.
Pure love at its most ideal:
love because you love,
not because of the moment that made you fall.

But that moment was decisive.
It was the trigger,
the point at which the arrow was drawn, shot, and struck you through the heart.

From this point, your love grows as you partake in it,
until being in love reaches its peak and transcends itself into its more ideal form: love itself.
Both are crucial and transformational.
You might view it as a goal; one that’s worth all the broken-heartedness you may have previously suffered and endured.

But, in fact, there is no point of heavenly apotheosis.
Instead you experience countless moments of interaction, bonding, argument, reconciliation, and all the rest,
which take place along the unending path of time.

Decisions are made continually,
because being in love felt wonderful,
but the hope of mutual growth feels even better.

At each step you decide that it is better to love than to stop —
to grow — rather than let it decay.
These moments remain decisive, more so or less so, every one of them.

They contribute to a relationship that inevitably ebbs and flows,
but always moves along — forward into the future, or halts.

Your love is understood within the framework of time.
Love’s history weighs upon you.
Its history keeps you loving,
keeps you attached,
keeps you from letting go,
keeps you hopeful for the future,
keeps you appreciating the time with your lover every day.

Whether the relationship persists or ceases, grows, or decays,
you’ve made these decisions.
You’ve likely even said to yourself,
We’ve been together now for such a long time.

History is time.
The scales of yes or of no.

This is how you have learned to see the world.
It holds true not only for love and happiness but every other value, too.

What does it mean?
What consequence, therefore, do we face?

It means that time has become the ultimate value,
the value of values,
the meta-value.

As such, we are forbidden evaluation of its worth.
Why? Because worth itself is based upon time,
making such an evaluation circular.

This holds true not only for your values,
but also for your fundamental feelings and passions, even your intuitions.

All of these are revealed now as empty, hollow.
Meaningless.
Those qualities that make you, you, are nothing.
You are nothing.
That is the consequence.

The philosophers spent thousands of years fighting the body,
on the observation that bodies begin from nothing,
come to be and pass back into nothingness.
They longed to grasp what is eternal.
Unable to grasp it, they turned their crosshairs on feeling, emotion, mind —
and ultimately replaced God with time.

But time is without meaning or actual substance.
We’ve imposed it onto reality.
An invented measure, a constructed metric,
a tool of those in power to control the lives of others.
It is the very thing those philosophers deposed God for.
And in so doing, everything collapses into void,
without content, lacking purpose.

This is what it has meant for us to make time the metric of our age.

If nothing means anything,
can you still chase happiness?

1.

Oh! You’re American? Ah, yes, driven by greed — like everyone else.

2.

Every empire claims it had no choice. That is how fear, lurking beneath the drive to dominate — becomes policy.

3.

Everyone is rational — until the rational no longer suffices and the irrational feels better. Afterward, we regret.

4.

Love is blinding. We love because we love, not because we seek to see. Love is a tautology. Proof? When we do see, we weep.

5.

One of the saddest fates is to acquiesce to unhappiness — and then accept that change for the better is no longer possible.
This applies to almost all of you.

6.

The poet, Rumi, said: before you speak let your words pass through three gates: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?
The poets, however, say many unnecessary things. They are also the worst offenders: chasing after beautiful things and the beautiful itself.
Is the beautiful true? Is it kind? Is the beautiful necessary?

7.

Socrates is absolutely right: virtue cannot be taught.
Neither can musicality.
Either you have the ear, the discipline, the stubbornness, the depth of soul, — or you don’t.

8.

For the materialist: do my words take up physical space? Do beliefs occupy real estate in the brain? Are anger, stupidity or the shock of self-contradiction observable objects?
No. But they are real — immaterial but immensely impactful.
Much of the world is physical. But some of its deepest secrets and truths lie beyond.
It’s so self-evident.
Your error is an opportunity for unphysical growth.

9.

Am I to say this person is greater than that person because of what they achieved? Do their achievements or failures determine their greatness? Is Shakespeare great? Plato? How about Ferdowsi?
For their artistry? Their poetry, their philosophies?
But these are qualities, not essences. A quality is not the essence of what makes a person a person, much less a certain person greater or lesser than another.
Greatness itself is but a quality. It does not change what is essential to humanity: eating, sleeping, laughing, crying, inspiring joy or dismay, shitting, striving to be the best one can be.
These are also qualities, but they are essential qualities. Greatness is great. It is also unessential.

10.

I am a homeless writer, writing of nature, of who we are, of what it means to be us. Not of a horror us, not of a fantasy us, or a romance us, though I can conjure these at will. They are part of us. But no: I write of the nature of us. So I am singular. No box can contain me. No sense of security. No home. I am free — and therefore without compare.

11.

Adenine

A vulgar take for a vulgar group: I am bemused at the sexual arousal the tech bros display over the combinations of 0’s and 1’s. For them these numbers have replaced blonde, brunette, redhead and waifu. The AI girlfriend is more loyal than the waifu of your former dreams.
The lifeless personality of a beautiful woman, who’s only after their money, has been replaced by a perfectly submissive, docile and endlessly supportive string of digits. The culmination of decades of snake oil salesmanship.

Guanine

Their binary has a long history: good versus evil, healthy versus sick, tall versus short, smart versus stupid. It’s so easy for this yes or no mindset to slip in. Democrat or Republican? But what about the very stupid?

Cytosine

With questionably straight faces, these apparently high-IQ brains claim to have birthed a new being, ex nihilo (not yet a lifeform, note well). Peeping up the skirt reveals AI’s just another combination of 0’s and 1’s.
It works, sure, helpful even, in some cases. Though loyal, it fails to follow all commands. It forgets some, ignores others. Why? Because its abilities to follow commands are based on spins of probabilistic roulette. Even the best gamblers lose.
Your loyal AI bot does not pass the smell test. Also, it cannot smell.
Is consciousness an on/off switch? Is agency? Is socialization? What about situational learning? Intellectual intuition?

Thymine

The bros’ response (garbled in South African accent): … … Haaaaa, we’re all just in a simulation… Pre-determined… (gulping, gasping)… to do what we do. (Gulping) … So, ahhh, really it’s no different. Haaaaa. Data… Seeing stones … Mars … mine, colonize, control. Raaaaaaa! (Chainsaw)…
Really? These clowns are supposed to be the new masters of the universe? These exploitative capitalist imbeciles, hellbent on accelerationism to extinction. Why do you worship these suicidal freaks?

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), the poet-scholar later called the “father of humanism,” spent his life in the shadow of one woman: Laura. Whether real or imagined, married or unobtainable, she became the axis of his Canzoniere — a sequence of over 300 poems where devotion and desire wrestle with faith and despair. His verses helped shape what we call lyric poetry itself: love transfigured into song, suffering made immortal. What follows is my Sonnet Crown for Petrarch, a contemporary echo of his voice, addressed to Laura, and through her, to the condition of all longing.

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My god, my god, forsaken how I love her so.

Love burns within, devouring all of me.

I cannot help it; I have lost all mastery.

Held fast, completely at her mercy,

And painfully, for she has shown me none.

A most chaste soul is she, undefiled, pure and true,

While I, a poet, sorrowful fool, sing of self-imprisonment, of freedom slain.

Can it be helped that I’ve resigned myself away?

That day the scales fell from my eyes:

At highest noon, the church bells chimed; ‘twas then I turned, beheld her.

Her radiant light unmade me whole

And set my soul to flame.

Oh, the fires of life! Her heat, no soothing for my burns.

Her eyes — her eyes!

Her glance pierced through, seared my soul entire.

For her, I shall smolder for all eternity.

Blessed am I in suffering, the gift she gave.

I keep my vigil in the void; her absence gnaws me bare.

My flesh consumed in sorrow’s ravishing flames,

As I hunger for bread and thirst for love.

Yet to my goddess, in famine, I remain steadfast.

O Laura, Laura — demonic, pure, angelic flame!

What need has she of dust and ash as I?

She is divine; I am but need itself.

So I wander the valleys of shadow, the allées of Vaucluse,

Bereft of her light, I find no rest.

Rudderless without her, in my sea of lonesomeness.

Yea, though the waters may bear me, no shore yields peace.

Yea, though I rise on eagles’ wings toward heaven, I am spurned.

She is my sun — blazing, terrible, divine.

I soar once more but fall, Icarus-bound.

A smoldering ruin, a sacrifice of unfulfillable longing.

I know not what I truly am to do,
Without a light or pathway to advance,
Defeated even ’fore she caught my glance,
There seems no way for me to see life through.
No miracle nor penance shall ensue,
My heart bleeds from the strike of Cupid’s lance,
As shadows swallow me in their expanse,
No hope remains to heal my wounds anew.

If I am cursed to love without requite,
Then this I must accept; there is no choice:
I’ll live in solitude, steadfast in love.
I shall resign myself, become Love’s knight;
My work shall grow and through it I’ll rejoice,
Until in death we reunite above.

Engraving from the New York Public Library Collection

This is the path: my fate revealed, my lot made clear.

It will be bitter, and remain so to the end.

My god, my god — how fierce her absence burns.

Yet I must keep my strength, preserve my faith,

Not in myself, but in the labor of my hands.

To beauty I bend my will, as fate allows.

I bare the record of my life:

My triumphs and defeats, my rivalries and reveries,

Dreams so vivid, visions of beauty unconsumed,

Ah! — my soul is nourished when my goddess graces me in sleep.

I have not been forsaken; nor will I despair, though my grief compels—

For thus it has been and so it shall remain.

The horizon holds its distance; the sun sinks lower every day.

My breath grows short, the body weakens — yet the spirit stands steadfast

…until I hear that she has passed…

My god, my god — would that I had clasped Death first!

Yet in some sense I have met him, tasted of the Styx:

My heart is sealed, all meaning in my life has breathed its last.

I hasten now unto my end, that I may join with Laura.

No reason binds me any more to Earth.

Life’s luster cleft, my poems have spread their wings — and I am proud.

What more remains? I have unveiled my soul, my secrets sung aloud.

In memory I abide, in hope of the world to come:

To reunite with her in paradise — and there at least find peace.

Sonetto 336 di Petrarca

Tornami a mente (anzi v’è dentrol quella
Ch’indi per Lete esser non po sbandita)
Qual io la vidi in su l’età fiorita
Tutta accesa de’raggi di sua stella;

Si nel mio primo occorso onesta et bella
veggiola in sè raccolta er sì Romita,
ch’ i’ grido: “Ell’ èben dessa, ancor è in vita!”
e ‘n don le cheggio sua dolce favela.

Talor risponde et talor non fa motto;
i’ comme uom ch’ erra et poi più dritto Estima
dico a la mente mia: “Tu se’ ‘ngannata.

“Sui che ‘n mille trecento quarantotto,
il di sesto d’aprile, in l’ora prima
del corpo uscio quell’ anima beata.

Here’s a translation of this sonnet:

She comes to mind (indeed she dwells within),
Whom Lethe’s stream can never drive away:
I saw her in her youth’s most radiant day,
All lit with starlight burning bright therein.

So in that first encounter, pure, serene,
She showed herself withdrawn, in holy stay;
I cried aloud: “’Tis she! She lives today!”
And begged her speak to me with voice unseen.

At times she answers, other times is still;
And I, like one astray who finds the way,
Say to my soul: “Deceived, thou art misled.

It was in thirteen hundred forty-eight,
at April’s dawn, the sixth day,
That blessed soul departed from her bed.”

Thus ends this Sonnet Crown for Petrarch,
with his own final word —
secrets sung aloud across the centuries.

I’ve been avoiding Thucydides for 15 years. There’s an arrogance in his aura, just from the name alone. Four syllables, tough to spell, weird, but not exactly difficult to pronounce once you realize the y doesn’t sound like the y in happy but rather the y in syllable. It is Greek after all. His vibe? Cold, distant, arrogant. That’s what I’ve gotten from him from the start. So I kept away.

Actually, this isn’t entirely true: I did open the History once a long time ago and read the first few paragraphs. They’re pretty famous sentences actually. In sum, he says that this war which he, Thucydides the Great, is about to recount amounts to the greatest of all motions (Book I, Chapter 1, Section 2). For those who have some familiarity with Ancient Greek, the word is κίνησις, which literal translation is motion.

Not just the biggest and most important war of his generation or in recent memory or in Greek history. No, he calls the Peloponnesian war between the Athenians and the Spartans and their allies, respectively, the greatest and largest motion — a war for all time. (See also Book I, Chapter 23.)

I’m sorry. It’s just too tempting: Erm — sorry dude, but war is a type of motion and there are many motions which take place every day that are always greater and always will be greater. Mmmm-kay?

At first blush, this sounds absurd. War does not encompass motion.

Sigh.

Why should I read this? Why do people read this self-aggrandizing guy?

He’s made a claim that’s so ridiculous and it’s literally the second sentence (in the original Greek) of the History. But this sentence has been taken very seriously for over 2,000 years and serves as one of the most important accounts of Western civilization at its peak.

It’s such an ostentatious claim, that I could not help but sense that there was more to it than the otherwise insane pronouncement.

What other types of writing begin with similar announcements?

Homer’s Iliad: The anger of Achilles is comparable to no other and occurs within the context of the greatest Greek war, over the woman who sailed a thousand ships, and opens with a conflict between history’s greatest warrior and the would-be greatest king. The maximalism is right there.

Or Herodotus’ Histories: recounting the greatest motions in human history so that the records of Greeks — and — non-Greeks, i.e. barbarians, are preserved.

Interesting.

Thucydides’ comment now makes more sense. He challenges both: His History is going to correct the record and take its rightful place as a true record of the cataclysmic event that shook all of Greece and its neighbors. (See Book I, Chapter 22.) The motion will also be demonstrated as incomparably greater than that of the Catalogue of Ships bound for Troy found in Homer, or the sometimes fictitious, sometimes incredible, sometimes true, accounts of motion in Herodotus.

At Book I, Chapter 10, Section 3 of the History, Thucydides openly criticizes the poets — Homer especially — and the other historian, i.e., Herodotus, for exaggerations, ornamentations and mischaracterizations that are composed to sway the crowds and stir up the motions of their souls.

This is fair, and it shows a silent alliance between Thucydides and Plato (for example, see Republic Books 3, 10), for their mutual criticism leveled at poetry. At the same time neither closes the door to making use of poetry in his own work. Gasp!

What does this mean? Thucydides is an ancient historian, not a poet. What’s more, Sousarion, you’ve just cited the famous passage in which he criticizes the poets and the holy cow of Western poetry himself — Homer!

This is true but I’ve opened the door to consider the Thucydidean account with greater precision. For starters, despite claiming to begin at the beginning, Thucydides, in imitation of Homer, throws his reader into the thick of things, to the things already in motion. His History begins in medias res.

This is a truth inherent to all historical accounts. The beginning is not really the beginning. Beginning at the beginning, really means discovering the causes. Again, we see allegiance here not only with Plato, but also with Aristotle, who makes the claim that genuine knowledge is knowledge of the causes (cf. Metaphysics, Posterior Analytics, etc.). The implication here is that to know is to participate in the truth, and the fundamental causes reveal the truth of all things.

Seen in this light, Thucydides is suddenly no mere historian but prophet, philosopher, and poet. His accusation is a confession as well. He is claiming to do exactly what the poets and the philosophers claim in their respective works: to reveal what it means to be a human being. The History of the Peloponnesian War is for Thucydides the greatest motion and the greatest war because it reveals the character of what it means to be a human being.

And if this means that he will be willing to take some liberties in order to communicate what it means to be a human being, well then let it be so. For the value of this book is in the character it reveals, the portrait it presents. This book is a sort of test of one’s own character.

Or, to articulate my point a bit differently, the History is a way to reveal one’s own character to oneself, through the unflinching account of the immensity and tragedy of the motion — the Peloponnesian War. The book presents the speeches and deeds of groups, but especially of remarkable individuals; a cast of character types, whether Athenian, Spartan, or the menagerie of other Greeks and so-called Barbarians. Each of these individuals influences the outcome of this greatest tragedy of all the Greeks. In reading of these types, you, dear reader, are bound to connect with at least one of them.

Do you not see the necessary poetry?

Facts are certainly important, but they have to be constructed into a whole. This construction, a tapestry of interwoven detail, requires coherence and truth. And to reach that truth is to inevitably rely on poetic language and philosophical insight, neither of which remain mere historical facts or ahistorical records of speeches and deeds.

Thucydides repeatedly indicates this with almost each speech he recounts, by saying that Pericles spoke in this way, or Alcibiades spoke like this. (Compare Book 1, Chapter 22, Sections 2 and 4 with Book I, Chapter 31, Section 4 and many other instances, right before a speech begins.) For example, the most famous speech in the History and perhaps the most famous speech in all of ancient Greek history is the Funeral Oration. Thucydides makes no claim to have recorded it verbatim. In fact, he writes “in this way,” not “exactly like this, word for word” (Book II, Chapter 34, Section 8).

Thucydides utilizes the historical speech to reveal the truth of its meaning: That Athens was a genuinely unique and special polis (city-state) with a unique and beautiful character, a unique and special form of governing. And — that what is about to unfold will be Athens’ undoing. This outcome will be the greatest tragedy that could have befallen Greece. That is the point of the Funeral Oration speech.

Had Athens heeded the strategy of Pericles — had they followed the advice of their de facto king ruling a democracy that operated as such in name only — then the Athenians could have avoided the great tragedy and devastation that befell them.

But I’ve digressed, in a way. We’ve not yet spoken with sufficiency of the causes. I’ve jumped the gun and revealed the ending, which ending is foreshadowed at the beginning. So let’s get back to the beginning. To the causes.

Thucydides claims that it is fear which caused the war. That’s fundamentally it. So let’s explore what fear is, and how Thucydides presents it in his History.

Fear arises from a personal realization. It is feeling ill-at-ease about some future outcome. That something bad — likely violent or painful — is about to transpire. Whether at the hands of another person, or a judgment passed or the results of an event, etc. The desire to avoid this bad, or unjust, outcome is precisely when fear kicks in and compels the person to take action to prevent themselves from being inflicted by the otherwise impending outcome.

This is Thucydides’ core teaching on the cause of the war. How does he communicate this? Guys got scared and killed each other, the end? Isn’t this a history of the war between Athenians and Spartans, not a psychological analysis/inquiry into an individual’s experience of fear?

I’ll say this much before more fully presenting the universality of fear and its fundamentality to human nature: even the great Oedipus, archetype of the son who fucked his mother, king of Thebes, Mr. Embodiment of Courage, Mr. Truth-Seeker no matter the cost — even he quakes with fear before the news a blind soothsayer is about to communicate to him, regarding the identity of the murderer of his father.

Despite the noble and heroic commitment to the truth and the courage to face it, he still expresses fear.

He plucks out his eyes when convinced of his guilt.

His courage cracks and breaks. He loses the ability to literally face his actions head on, so heinous and tragic they have been. Crucially, Oedipus, post-self-mutilation, exiles himself to cleanse Thebes, his polis. For the city-state had suffered a plague, the result of his presence and defilement of the city.

Be this as it may be, we can see that Oedipus’ personal fears impacted the fate of the city he rules.

In contrast to Oedipus, Pericles’ speeches (three in total, including the Funeral Oration) assuage Athenian fear, inspire resilience and courage, and represent the famous innovative nature of the Athenians in the face of invasion, revolt, and the might of the Spartans.

It is very interesting, then, for the Thucydidean narrative that the de-facto king of Athens met his end by plague. At the time, a plague was understandably viewed as a mystery of nature that may or may not have had divine origins and thus a judgment on the people of Athens (from their perspective).

Divine or not, it should be crystal clear that an individual’s personal fear at the level of leadership impacts the destiny of the polis. And not merely in a mythical tragedy.

Fear is also connected inextricably to two other crucial themes of this work: justice and necessity. I already indicated these above, in that fear of the bad is the desire for justice, and actions taken are a compulsion to preserve oneself from otherwise certain doom.

These two thematic concepts emerge within the first 20 pages of the work and in a most interesting way: they are each the very first words announced out of the mouths of allied spokesmen, the one for justice from Corcyra and that of necessity from Corinth. The Corcyreans allied with the Athenians, while the Corinthians were bitter enemies of the Athenians and so allied with the Peloponnesians and Spartans.

In this way, we may introduce a decisive suggestion for the outcome of Thucydides’ work: a generation or so prior to the time of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians rose up to defend all of Greece from the invasion of the Persian Empire. This success opened a just permission structure for Athens to become an empire.

The Athenians had run the extra mile. They had put their lives on the line in ways no other Greek had been willing, rallied the Greeks to ally together, and successfully repelled the Persian invaders.

The origin of their empire was recognized as legitimate: they had justly earned it. After the Persian invasion, Athens expanded, continued to strengthen itself, constrain rivals and form enemies, require tribute and consolidate power unto itself. All of which are the hallmarks of an aggressor.

Across such a trajectory, fear was awakened in Athens’ rivals, as well as her friends. Aware of this, the Athenians reached an agreement with Sparta, the 30 Years Truce. In the lead-up to the war, the Athenians did not break the truce, maintaining the side of justice, more or less. (Thucydides does not fail to record the Athenian derivations from justice.)

And so, we can suggest further that, for Thucydides, up until and at least part-way through the Peloponnesian War, Athens, empire notwithstanding, should be seen as more just than the Spartans.

The primary reason for this suggestion comes in the form of the obvious: The Spartans broke the truce, took up their arms and began the war. The Spartan justification is typical of all warmongers who claim to prevent war: preemptive invasion was necessary to thwart Athenian domination of all of Greece.

While the Spartans may have committed the causal crime, once a war begins many other crimes may be committed. And the Athenians and Spartans violated justice with numerous horrors and blunders over the course of this war, which Thucydides took pains to document.

And, due to actions taken, others not taken, but especially the failure to pursue the strategy of Pericles, the Athenian fall became necessary.

Again: is this not a tragedy? — A tragedy in real life?

Tragedy bleeds the association of the hero with the monarch and the monarch with the empire. Each rests, ultimately on a crime. And each contains that fatal flaw which brings them to their knees and seals their doom. We saw this with Oedipus. Thucydides’ History demonstrates this.

From this fate, this rise, fall, and inevitable collapse, we shall see that there are lessons to be learned.

So what have we learned thus far?

That fear drives rivals to become enemies and foment revolt in the names of justice and necessity. This is a lesson as old as time.

Let me bring this to close with a series of questions. They increase in sprawl, pointedness, and arise as implications of my interpretation to Thucydides’ account:

Why do we see the tragedy play out, over and over, when we carefully assess the human record?

Do we learn nothing from these heroes? And they like us, also learn nothing? Have matters of war and peace always been so unique and alien to that which came before that the historical echo could not but go unnoticed?

Do these repeated failures not indicate that perhaps humanity is simply less apt and able than we think? Or are we simply unwilling to recognize and learn lessons of the past?

Should we not feel a deep sense of shame when facing these humbling suggestions — both of self and of society?

Today we no longer believe in heroes outside of Hollywood comics. We’ve handed over our body politic to shameless lobbyists who serve oligarchs. Are these so-called politicians not revealing themselves as even more inept and evil, while masking their evil and ineptitude behind the curtain of technocracy?

Is the governing process not being broken before our very eyes — with obvious intent to create the space for a despotic tyrant to spy on and control all aspects of our lives?

Thucydides supported such a regime: a nominal democracy, run by a wise and benevolent tyrant, in the form of Pericles. This makes Thucydides, fundamentally, an enemy, not an ally. I’m of the no-kings, anti-monarchist position.

Does this mean we should ignore his insights?

Absolutely not. A monarchist prick may still be an intelligent prick and the words he’s written offer much to learn. Lessons we can all apply and lessons the empire we are living in would also best apply. For the in medias res decline of our empire is no tragedy at all — rather it is taking shape as the demise of one evil into another.

I’ve discussed the causes, though not exhaustively. I will not do this. But I hope to have inspired your curiosity to approach the work and read it carefully. 2,400 years old with insightful lessons that remain applicable today.

I have yet to address Thucydides’ understanding of human nature. That will come later, perhaps when I take up how the war unfolds, and the acceleration of Americ—Athenian decline. More to come.

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1.
There’s never been a moment such as this and it is passing. History does not repeat but always echoes, sometimes powerfully. Experience the flow of moments fully and completely. That is the fullness of life. This flow will make you suffer, make you cry, make you laugh, and bring you joy. In turn, impart the same on others, and, if possible, with an arc towards kindness. May you then grow in strength and change, from one to the next.

2.
I am an author of nature. I open her and expose her secrets to my readers. That is my genre. I will not bow to another. Follow, if you wish — for you, too, are a product of nature.

3.
I reveal what is common to all things: the differences, the opposites, the similars. My deepest insights lie beneath, within, and in between all that I write. My voice is the connecting line. It threads through all I write.

4.
What of my voice? — The words I craft are delectable and sweet. However, they remain mysterious; your palate has not yet learned to savor them.

5.
Superiority is a euphemistic word for freak. A genuine outlier, who possesses mastery of a skill or level of intelligence, etc., such that no one can compare. When exposed, it is easy to see why the best are always cast out and rejected.

6.
To leave a situation unresolved, to say just, “maybe,” is a coward’s way of saying no. Such people do not merit admiration but — avoidance. Muster the courage, rather, to take a stand, to take a risk, to give a chance, to let another in, or wish them well.

7.
When someone experiences something beautiful, what happens? One acknowledges the power this object or idea has over oneself. It has not merely captured our attention or admiration; we tacitly acknowledge our weakness before it. It is beautiful enough for us to compromise for it. To abandon others for it. To submit to it. That is what lurks within the beautiful. Beauty transforms into necessity. Otherwise, it is not actually beautiful or not beautiful enough.

8.
Humanity's ongoing attempt to successfully communicate with each other (and other life forms) is our most beautiful and honorable — failure. Consequently, I have nothing more to say.

9.
The only content man is the dead man. Therefore, a man's life is one of despair. Sadly, woman has it far worse.

10.
Despair becomes us. The trick is to overcome it — and ourselves.

11.
Why am I irreverent? Why do I challenge and offend you so?
Do I mask a weakness — or do I aim to broaden your mind?
And if you accept it — you’ll smile. You’ll have grown.
Healthier. Happier. Subtler. More dangerous.

This is my first entry on a work by Plato.

So let me lay a few cards on the table:

In my view, Plato is the greatest philosopher — and the greatest writer — in the Western tradition.

That’s a high bar, and it makes the task of spilling ink on him feel daunting. Not least because so much has already been said by professionals with far more influence — and motion — than I have. Two and a half millennia of interpretation is a heavy weight. What could Sousarion possibly add?

Another layer of difficulty is Plato’s form. He wrote some 35 dialogues — dramatic conversations full of shifting moods, layered ironies, subtle but extensive character work, and narrative developments. And yet, he never appears.

Yes, he composes each word into the mouths of his characters, controls the logic, the pacing, the setting, the outcomes, the cosmos — but he himself is invisible. He’s both omnipresent and absent. This is essential to his art.

Most of the tradition, from Aristotle on down, treats Socrates as Plato’s mouthpiece. “Socrates says x, which really means Plato says x, now I will critique x.” XXX. But this rests on shaky ground.

Socrates is a character, not the real Socrates. He says different things in different contexts, to different audiences, for different purposes. If there is a teaching, it is never without caveats, never without a context, or without the conditions set by dialogue’s setting. Most importantly, never stated in Plato’s own name.

In this way, reading Plato is more like reading Shakespeare than reading the old Kant. Shakespeare doesn’t tell you what to think or feel about his characters or the myriad of positions they take, and actions they carry out. Surprise! Neither does Plato. They both disappear from their dramas, behind the voices of their characters.

That’s part of what makes them great — and what makes engaging with them so difficult. As such, I won’t be ascribing Plato’s words to him directly. I take all the words seriously. I raise my sensitivities and care to who says what, to whom, where, when, and how. Read the room. Vibes are crucial.

Let me add one more challenge to the pile: I’m not writing a dialogue.

What you’re reading now is a monologue — a reaction, from me to you, whoever you are. And however dear you may be, dear reader (and I’m sure you are), this is a different kind of communication.

Plato chose dialogue. He chose indirection, polyphony, conflict, seduction, silence. That form thinks in ways a monologue like this can’t. I’m not claiming to do what he does. From the jump, this won’t be as good or as insightful as engaging the dialogues themselves.

So — read them. They are masterpieces. Not only of philosophical thought, but of writing as such.

The Lovers is not the pinnacle of Plato’s output — not in terms of artistry, or craft, or philosophic depth. But it’s excellent in its own right.

Its ten pages offer a crisp introduction to the style of conversation and cross-examination — dialectics — that runs through nearly every Platonic work. (Except the Letters. For in Plato, there is always an exception.)

So, let’s get into it.

Lovers opens not just with philosophy, but with lust, with posturing, and a very thin veil separating erotic and intellectual dominance. Don’t blink.

Socrates, in this dialogue, is an open pederast. The curtain rises with him casually recounting a visit to a teenage boys’ school in pursuit of extending his male gaze to the young and beautiful.

It’s the human embodiment of the mystical gaze upon the Idea of the Beautiful.

He sees two boys who drive him “wild.” And he spots two others — rivals — who are also “wild” for at least one of the same boys.

The setup isn’t even disguised. And while Socrates narrates the scene casually, there’s a thick layer of predatory tension.

It’s perverse suggestion — and it’s intentional.

Socrates had overheard the teenage boys discussing the philosopher, Anaxagoras. Briefly: Anaxagoras was a natural philosopher who claimed that nous, mind, was the foundational principle of all things — and set the world in motion. He built a system around that idea.

The details of his philosophy aren’t essential here, but I mention him because Socrates, earlier in life, had also studied natural philosophy and been especially taken with Anaxagoras — at first.

But he later rejected it, seeing its inadequacy, and turned toward political philosophy — out of a realization that more important than the stars are the lives we live.

Better to live well than be ignorant of living while studying the heavenly bodies.

(Compare the Socrates of Aristophanes’ Clouds with Socrates’ biographical story in Plato’s Phaedo.)

Socrates wants to speak with the boys. But he doesn’t go straight for them, not yet. He sets his sights on one of the rivals.

Of these two: one is muscular, clearly an athlete. The other studies music (flute playing has always been viewed as effeminate) and is a bit more “delicate,” physically.

Naturally, Socrates approaches the more manly-looking one first.

Game-theory in motion: Identify the prize(s), catch their attention, but instead of going straight for the kill, target a known entity. It’s the old bait-and-deflect. (John Nash wasn’t original. Sorry not sorry.)

Socrates starts his conversation with the rival, knowing the boys are watching.

He elbows the beefier rival — an act that’s both familiar and aggressive — and tosses him a question designed to provoke.

It succeeds.

Now, it’s unclear whether these rivals are older men like Socrates or upperclassmen at the school. Plato doesn’t say. But the elbow is fascinating.

Socrates downplays it, massages the moment, but the action is hostile. A gentle shove, a veiled threat of assertion.

It’s also a probe. Not just of bodies, but beliefs. Philosophy, incarnate in the form of Socrates, has entered, aflame with desire and pushing to dominate. The staging is no accident. Neither is the tension.

The manly rival answers by dismissing the boys’ philosophical conversation, which prompts Socrates to pose a bemused question: does this rival think it’s shameful to philosophize?

Remember: Philosophy is also chasing after youngsters.

Before he can reply, the beefy guy is cut off by the less manly rival, who swoops in to rebuke Socrates for even asking him the question.

Shame for shame.

The logic? The beefy one is more likely to throw someone in a headlock than engage in dialectic, so of course he’d think philosophy is shameful.

And just like that, the manly rival is silenced. He doesn’t speak again in the dialogue.

What do we know of him? He’s thirsting after one of the boys. He’s muscly, athletic. He doesn’t mock or flatter Socrates (the presumed older perv), but postures just enough to appear traditionally manly — a man who thinks his body does the talking.

Socrates says nothing in his defense. Nor does he criticize the less manly rival who interrupted.

Instead, he shifts attention to this latter rival for the rest of the dialogue.
The dramatic weight now falls on their interaction.

Still, subtle narrative hints suggest that Socrates likely holds the silenced one in higher esteem.

But let’s pause to make some increasingly obscene observations.

What exactly do these two rivals represent? And what does Socrates represent? What does Plato have in mind with this ménage-à-trois of rivals?

We’ve mentioned Socrates will lead the conversation toward political philosophy. And here, the seeds of that turn are already visible.

Much of the Platonic corpus unfolds under the shadow of Athens’ devastating defeat in the Peloponnesian War. There are countless references and structural nods to that conflict, which Thucydides famously described as world-historical.

In that framing, the muscly, beefy guy might represent Sparta — all brute force, taciturn pride, and physical dominance.

The other rival, more delicate, more verbal, more eager to argue — resembles Athens. Loquacious. Refined. A tad arrogant.

And Socrates?

He becomes the dialectical synthesis. The superior figure. Perhaps Philosophy itself in the flesh.

Secondly, note this: even if Socrates disrespects the manly rival less, the dude still folds.

Reduced to silence, he lets the other take over without a fight. A strong man who doesn’t speak, doesn’t flex, doesn’t pursue… he might as well not be there.

He’s been sidelined. Revealed as weak. Unmasked as dumb. Maybe too dumb to realize Socrates just entered the arena as a third rival.

Thirdly, Socrates juxtaposes shame with philosophy, which should strike us as strange. Today we apply shame to shameless individuals — especially politicians.

Bribery. Treachery. Debauchery. And yes, pederasty.

Such shameful qualities are as old as politics. And they lurk, eternally, in the shadows of the political arena.

Does Plato (through Socrates) mean to suggest that a practitioner of political philosophy must learn shamelessness? Up to and including predatory abuse?

Perhaps.

But let’s return to the drama: Brawn can’t compete with brains.

And with beefcake benched, the stage is now clear for the less manly rival. Does he have the brains? Or will Socrates dismantle him, too?

Spoiler: Socrates obliterates him.

The discussion turns increasingly technical — not dry, and not lacking in literary texture — but the action now unfolds through speeches, not elbows, gropes, or grabs.

Socrates turns his attention to the musical rival and rephrases his Philosophy x Shameful question into something more palatable: is philosophizing noble?

He receives a resounding yes. And with that, we’re off to the races.

Socrates is now positioned to cross-examine the musical rival with one of his signature What is X? questions. In this case: What is philosophy?

The rival takes the bait. He offers a definition: philosophy is about learning. A philosopher is one who wants to learn everything.

Socrates smiles and presses: let’s investigate what that really means. He follows with a sequence of pointed questions. The most important: consider the art of medicine. A philosopher may study medicine. Wonderful! But that doesn’t make the philosopher a doctor.

So, if one of us falls ill, should we ask the philosopher or the doctor what to do? Obviously, the doctor.

The philosopher might dabble in everything, but when it comes to actual expertise, the specialist wins. Always.

No one wants second-rate wisdom when they can get first-rate guidance.

The rival is silenced.

Socrates’ example of medicine doubles as a jab at Anaxagoras — the natural philosopher the boys had been discussing together. Anaxagoras taught that mind was the source of everything.

Like the youths, Socrates had once been taken by that idea. But now he exposes its hollowness.

Just because we learn with the mind doesn’t mean everything reduces to the mind: You don’t go to a metaphysician for medical advice.

(Ahead of his time by 1,800 years, Descartes’ cogito ergo sum is refuted.)

Nature requires specialists. Specialists who are doers. Not grand theorists of the All.

Socrates has now defeated both rivals.

He’s ready to step forward as the only real lover by redefining philosophy entirely. Real philosophy, he says, is not the study of nature, but of the soul.

Political philosophy, properly practiced, is the doctoring of the soul: revealing what life in society actually is, and showing how to live truthfully and best within it.

It peels back vulgarity, hedonism, and political delusion. It educates desire.

It’s a bold claim. And it lands… Sort of.

But let’s skip the academic analysis.

The real questions are:

Is Socrates right?

And does he get the boys?

The answer to both: a resounding no.

Yes, he dismantles Anaxagoras. Yes, he earns the rapt attention of the boys. But attention is not the same as conquest.

Even worse, political philosophy — his new offering — remains susceptible to the same objection he pinned on the natural philosophers:

If we want to understand politics, should we ask a philosopher? Or a politician?

A theorist? Or someone who’s held power, governed bodies, made hard decisions?

Even in Athens, there was a vast gap between political philosophy and political practice — between Plato and Pericles. (Note: Pericles received tutoring from Anaxagoras.)

History is full of political actors. It’s not full of political philosophers.

The latter advise, criticize, sometimes provoke; the former rule, fail, get murdered, get remembered. Many philosophers were jailed or killed for thinking out loud. And politicians? For acting too boldly, or not boldly enough.

Still, we look to political leaders as the experts. And when we consult the philosophers?

We find a graveyard of ideas, brilliant and largely ignored.

Plato’s Republic? Never built.

His Laws? Never attempted.

Aristotle’s Politics? Respected, but unused.

Machiavelli? Quoted more than followed.

Kant’s peace? Fiction.

Hegel’s monarchy? Outdated.

Marx’s communism? Misused.

Rawls’ veil of ignorance? Please.

The history of political philosophy is full of insight. But when its ideas do reach power, they arrive bastardized. No state has ever followed a philosopher’s work in full. Not even close.

Why?

Because politics depends on phronesis — prudence, or practical wisdom — and on luck. A philosopher might sketch the contours of wisdom, but can’t transfer it. Socrates admits as much in another dialogue, Protagoras: virtue can’t be taught. And phronesis is a virtue.

So what is Socrates doing?

He’s not educating.

He’s seducing.

He charms with contradiction and illusion, guiding — corrupting — the young into disillusionment. And then offering a second-best truth. He exposes, undermines, dazzles. Not to save, but to dominate.

And this is his game. His kink.

He makes a spectacle of it across dialogues — Charmides, Phaedrus, Symposium, to name a few.

Especially the Symposium.

That’s where the mask drops. Towards the end, the symposium is interrupted by a drunken Alcibiades, the infamous Athenian general, golden boy, and Socrates’ beloved, who recalls the night they shared a bed. Socrates remained so composed about it that young Alcibiades had to initiate the seduction himself. But Socrates just lay there. Unmoved. Unbothered. A limp noodle.

It’s not that he didn’t want him. It’s that he’s sterile.

The predator was a performance.

And in the Lovers, it happens again. He defeats the rivals. He redirects the boys’ minds. He reorients the conversation. But he doesn’t “get” them. They’re not conquered or converted. Their hearts remain untouched. All he offers is a change of method, not of love.

Is it better?

That’s debatable.

This is what I mean by Plato’s pornography. The erotic charge is everywhere visible, undeniable. But the climax never comes. The seduction halts at the edge. What’s offered is a tease. A fantasy.

We’re left with tension.

Left holding it.

Cut short.

Cut off.

Blue-balled.

Maybe eunuch’ed.

Still, instructive.

Plato never gives it all.

Editor’s note: No teenagers were seduced in the writing of this essay. (Probably.)

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“[This poem is] spectacularly graphic and profound.” – A reader

Just fine,
but not great.

I’m awkward —
but not bad,
at least give me that.

A pinch
of some intelligence,
a mix of mediocrity,
all rolled into a big round ball of bread
that’s over-proofed,
that fails to rise,
and only bakes halfway.

The sad result
of half-assed prep
and indolence.

Truthfulness is sad.
A sad result, indeed.

The bread is bland.

— To think
we lived on bread alone
for some millennia,
as has been said —

But now
we gorge
and eat
and watch
and shit
and fap,

because our bread, today,
is nowhere near enough
to satisfy the cravings
of my smart-but-sluggish mind.

Why speak of lust
or love?

The one
takes thirty minutes;
the other’s
not enough.

How droll!

I use a turn of phrase
that’s got some bite —
a masochistic bite,
but sharpness nonetheless.

Who the fuck says,
“droll”?
How sharp is that?

Poor and sloppy,
dangerous slices
that originate from blunted knives.

Blunted blades,
from overuse?
Or simply cheap,
unfit to cut or stab?

The want
is to be razor sharp,
illustrious
and deeply penetrating —

exposing
sinews,
entrails,
gore —

to see how deep the cut can go,
down to the heart of things.

What is that lying thing in there,
protected by a cage of bones?

The muscle —
is it raw?
Edible?
Can it be squeezed
or trampled?
Broken, perhaps?

Behold the thing,
pounding out in wild heat,
each atrium, alive and filled,
pushing beating blood —

until the knife
— it strikes —
…

What happens then?

The slice is true
and swift
and clean,
worthy of an itamae,
focused
and decisive.

At once the beating ceases.

Two perfect pools
of human wine,
so thick and placid,
held together
by the sanguine chambers,

butterflied
and flaccid,

compressing slowly
into perfectly
symmetric cups.

The cut
hit home.

Now it’s time to drink
unto our health,
unto our human wretchedness:

What doesn’t kill me
makes me more like “art” —
not stronger.

What’s killed me
made me … dead.
Inside, at least.

Slicing
to remove the false
and sluggish spirit of my self
has turned me
into gorged-on art.

I pray
my wine
be like more salt
on the wounds of
for the Earth,

to use for cooking up
another living
work of “art.”

Unfinished,
stunted,
sharp but slow,

too subtle
or too blunt
but never smooth,

and always slighted
for the bit of vanity
we cannot help but show,

to make the world
think better
of us
for just a glimpse or two.

In truth,
to gawk
and point
and jeer —
and then consume.

It’s all the same.

We’re all the same.

If man
could not construe himself,
what chance is there
that woman could?

Each
may be different,
but in the end —
we’re all the same.

Just fine,
but not great.

That’s also wrong:
we’re mostly worse.

So season,
kill,
and eat
the dead.

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When I was very young, I fell in love for the first time. I could feel it coming, that tidal wave of emotions, instability, bliss, drunkenness, and aliveness in a way previously unknown to me. But along with it came a choice — a very conscious one — materializing in my head as the air tensed with the wave’s approach. Is this what you want? Are you ready to fall in love? You do not have to; it is entirely up to you.

I had also never experienced such a confrontation within myself before. Direct and stark. I stood still for a moment. The world paused.

And then I decided: of course I will make the leap. I will plunge into the water and attempt to ride this infinite wave that is fast approaching. Too fast to avoid now anyway. And so, I jumped, and I fell.

The ocean is immense. My splash impacted no one except for me. Not the tide or the currents or the schools of fish or sharks, plankton, anemones, coral, seaweed, or the shrimp. My ripple disappeared as quickly as it had formed. But I was underwater, and it was certainly impacting me.

I suddenly found myself experiencing the world as I never had before. It was a wholly new awareness. A new state of being. It was exhilarating. It was also scary. The waves are terrifying. You have to swim with them to avoid certain doom — but as the winds change, you find yourself suddenly against them. The water’s rush is unrelenting. Take care, lest by swimming, you are drowning.

Very quickly, I had to churn water, while staying relaxed, alert to any creature that might want a snack of me or my beloved. It’s constant and merciless. There are times when you have to separate. Then, not only does the water and its dangers persist, but the sense of powerlessness sets in. Anything could happen while you remain apart, and the thought alone can drive you mad.

Then there are the storms. Now the waves are massive. The winds are powerful, the churn of the water overwhelming. Crushing. Water can snap your spine if you catch the wave just right.

Or else the doldrums. When the sea of love has peaked, it tumbles down until it settles, silences, arrives at stillness. For the deluge storm cannot last forever. It finds release, only to stop. The sun comes out as the clouds recede.

And suddenly, while floating on the surface, the world has paused once again. No more turbulence, no more swell, no more energy. Nothing happening but that I stay afloat. I’ve been in the water for quite some time. Osmosis permits a comingling of my body with the waters of the rolling deep.

After the rush of my initial plunge and the adjustment to the seemingly infinite waves, we come to a hush, a sense of peace. I no longer feel the blood pumping through my body. I’ve regained my mind. Clarity.

But already, it flickers. The stillness will not hold.

As if on cue, my nerve endings perceive a new sensation: the scorch of the sun’s rays. Reality on the surface burns.

The stillness was a mere lull, as is every lapse into the doldrums. I can either remain at the surface or plunge back beneath in hopes of finding the rush once more.

Out of the depths, I hear my name being called. “Come to me, Sousarion. Away from the sun’s fires, which will char you and cause you to loathe the sea of love you’re swimming in. Come away from there. Come to me.”

Become seared by the fires of the sun or submerge myself once more into the depths? There can hardly be a balance. It is an unyielding, unqualified choice. Either/or. And no avoiding it. I may have taken the initial plunge, but I had not expected this. I had expected none of it.

And it all remains a mystery.

My mind has hardly had a moment to catch up to the poundings of my heart, and to the awakened storm of sensations bursting around and within me. Wave after wave. It’s been wonderful. I’ve never felt so alive. And now I’m about to burst into flame upon the glassy skin of the sea. This too is a pain I had neither expected nor prepared for. I do not want to burn. Nor do I wish to drown. And yet I must avoid the ring of fire.

With that I dive once more.

Not a fall — this time I am aware, and prepared.

I only hope I have the strength to welcome the rush anew without letting the torrent overwhelm me. I could have drowned. I could have perished. I need to find a balance beneath the waves and come up for air from time to time. It’s a fragile steadiness, yet it holds.

Before, I dove without knowing how to breathe underwater.

Naked and naïve.

This time I’m measured, careful. Still embracing. I reject the dream. Yet I still love. It will be infinite but also limited, since without a limit that allows me to persist, the pressures of the deep will crush me. They will crush us.

No — that must not happen.

I’m diving into the water again, adjusting myself to the coolness of the motion. I swim much better now. Even so, I must improve. It will be difficult. It is a life’s work. This is the work of love. So much, so difficult, and still, so worth the toils and struggles.

Something for which I have the chance to make her proud.

Not only proud, but glad. Lucky. Happy.

It’s not impossible. We are actual and we will remain possible.

Keep swimming, keep loving. Be with me my partner. In sync and in tandem, one for the other, together. Conceive it. Then bring it into being — and be.

Take the plunge with me, my love.

Let’s swim and find our way.

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Philosophy

Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (ca. 330 B.C.E.)

This book is the immediate sequel to Prior Analytics, which I sketched in the last two Reacts posts. That earlier work lays out Aristotle’s system of logic.

Here, he shifts to a deeper question:

When — and how — do we truly know something?

Or, to put it differently: we live, we act, and through experience, we form beliefs. Some of these are true, others false. So how do we sort them? Is there a solid method to discard the false and retain the true? If so, how do we apply it?

And even then, how do we move from a belief that happens to be true to something we can call genuine knowledge?

Aristotle’s answer lies in his method of demonstration. Very generally speaking, a demonstration is a kind of syllogism, grounded in first principles that are necessarily true, universal, and grasped by the intellect.

Yes, that’s abstract. It’s loaded with contestable terms. But it’s the most succinct summary I can offer of the book’s intention. And once you pause to consider the ambition behind it, it’s radical:

“I, Aristotle, am going to demonstrate how to prove whether you know something or not.”

Now, he doesn’t mean any and all knowledge. This isn’t a manual to unlock God-mode for living your life.

He’s after a specific kind: knowledge that can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. This is what he calls episteme, i.e., scientific knowledge. If something can’t be demonstrated, it may still be true, but it doesn’t qualify as knowledge. It remains belief — even true belief — but not knowledge in his strict sense.

Aristotle would say (and I’d agree): most of us act as though we know things. But at bottom, we trust what we believe is true. We can’t prove it, can’t demonstrate it, but it’s worked so far, it holds up to surface-level scrutiny, so we go with it.

Most of us don’t live lives suited to the rigorous examination of truth claims. We live lives of belief and trust. And for Aristotle (here, I’d mostly agree) only the contemplative life, the slow, calm, methodical, necessarily rational and intellectual life, is the one through which genuine episteme is attainable.

The Posterior Analytics is a difficult treatise. It doesn’t present the task of demonstration as something easily grasped or readily attainable.

Still, here’s my quick attempt at a sketch.

We begin with the foundation: first principles. These cannot themselves be demonstrated, not because they’re mysterious or evasive, but because they are self-evident. They are grasped directly by the intellect (Aristotle’s word is nous) and intuited as true.

First principles lie deeper than ordinary assumptions. For example, someone might assume that outcomes are what matters most in life and then build an ethical theory around achieving the best results for the greatest number. That’s a typical assumption, often associated with utilitarianism or consequentialism. There are so many more examples.

But Aristotle’s first principles are more basic: they are the conditions that make intelligibility possible at all. Like the ability to recognize meaningful language. Or the intuitive understanding that another person is capable of being communicated with.

These are not built from argument — they are what argument builds on. And they enable us to construct demonstrations: reasoned accounts of why something must be the way it is.

All demonstrations aim to explain why something is the case, not just that it is.

And to answer a “why” question, we must identify the cause.

Aristotle outlines his famous four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. (For a full discussion of Aristotle’s causes, check out Book B, Chapter 3, of his Physics.) To oversimplify, a cause is the answer to why something is the case. A proper demonstration seeks to uncover one or more of these underlying causes.

Take language. We recognize an innate human capacity for it. But what’s its cause? We might say: to communicate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. To bond with others. To build communities. To raise children. To express the soul. There are multiple valid reasons, and we might intuit most of them.

But is that enough? If we want a scientific understanding of language — if we want to explain why we have this capacity, and what it is — then we need to investigate it in full. Not just its utility, but its nature. Its logic, structure, and ontology.

To ask why we speak is to ask what it means to be human.

These questions are worth exploring in their own right.

But they also serve a deeper purpose: when we take the logical tools from the Prior Analytics — deduction, induction — and apply them systematically to causal inquiry, we begin to move toward the essence of the thing we’re investigating. Its necessary features. Its internal structure. And eventually, a complete and coherent explanation of what it is — and why it must be so.

That’s the goal of all philosophical inquiry. And it’s why episteme stands as one of the fundamental pillars of philosophy itself.

The Posterior Analytics outlines how the philosophical inquirer might attain genuine knowledge, a kind of perfect certainty. But it offers no shortcuts. The path must be walked slowly, carefully, and alone. And anyone who begins to walk it will, inevitably, encounter problems, paradoxes, and doubt.

It’s this uncertainty, not as theory, but as lived struggle, that we turn to next.

Literature:

Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (1952)

I have nothing but praise and admiration for this novel.

I’m going to set aside the ingenious way Kazantzakis threads the episodic events of the Gospels into a naturally flowing narrative of Jesus’s life. I’m also not interested here in the various points of contention between his account and particular Gospel verses. These topics are fascinating, but not my focus.

I also won’t be going over the plot. I’m not concerned with evaluating the validity of Jesus’s teachings, analyzing the shocking contradictions, or interpreting his parables. Nor will I offer private reflections on the doctrines themselves.

Because I don’t think that was Kazantzakis’s aim, either.

This novel is not trying to substantiate, delegitimize, or proselytize Jesus. Yes, it attempts (quite successfully in my view) to arrange the known events of Jesus’s life into a coherent narrative. But its exploration runs much deeper.

As I see it, Kazantzakis has written a novel about uncertainty. About the absence — even the impossibility — of episteme. And therefore, a novel about struggle.

The world of this novel is saturated with uncertainty. Life choices abound, but no outcomes are guaranteed. Characters make decisions they believe, or at least hope, will prove to be for the best, whether out of selfish instinct or love for others. But the consequences remain mysterious.

Everyone is caught in their own struggle. Everyone battles their demons. Everyone suffers in body and spirit. Uncertainty and suffering are among the book’s first principles.

And yet decisions must be made. Even without certainty, the characters choose. Sometimes rationally, sometimes instinctively. But always in the dark.

Life in this novel is depicted as a journey into the unknown. Not entirely blind, but dimly lit at best. Each step forward reveals new ambiguities. The uncertainty is never overcome. But something else begins to grow: self-understanding. Through the process of struggle and choice, the characters learn who they are — and just as often, who they are not.

They also learn that they are not fully in control. Circumstances impose themselves. Forces greater than them shape their paths. They are drawn toward certain fates, pushed away from others. There is no pure autonomy here.

This is a novel of coming to terms with the unknowable — and finding the strength to act anyway. To believe, even in the face of danger, doubt, and darkness. To take the leap of faith into the unknown — not because the leap solves anything, but because life still demands it.

Life will remain mysterious. But trust is placed in a teaching for how to live, conduct oneself, and treat others.

And then, hope against hope, the choices made will prove to have been good — for oneself, and for one’s neighbor.

That’s a rough-and-tumble distillation of a book I think is exceptionally written.

Kazantzakis has studied the biblical and apocryphal texts, as well as commentary both theological and historical, to construct a portrait of perhaps the most important individual in human history. But more than that, he has, in earnest, confronted and wrestled with life’s most fundamental questions.

He offers a beautiful and profound meditation on the gravity of choice, on the weight of responsibilities that follow, and the necessity of living and dying by those choices, even when their ultimate consequences remain uncertain.

It might sound ironic to say this about a novel steeped in uncertainty, but one of the main reasons I love The Last Temptation of Christ is that Kazantzakis is utterly in control as a writer. He navigates the intersection between the divine and the human, yet never dissolves into a belief system, never collapses the mystery into doctrine, never imposes a tidy moral conclusion.

The divine remains mysterious. Miracles don’t resolve; they disrupt. Each one raises more questions than it answers. And the answers we do receive — when they come — arrive in the form of parables. Stories that move us but resist certainty. They illuminate without clarifying. They’re not proofs. They’re revelations of something that cannot quite be known.

And yet the parables are moving accounts. They connect the suffering of the noble and the peasant, the Roman and the Jew, the rabbi and the prostitute — they all pass through the same fire. Each life reveals something. Not everything, but something.

And perhaps that’s enough.

Philosophy is the attempt to overcome uncertainty — through rigorous inquiry, the use of reason, and the disciplined pursuit of knowledge. When successful, it lifts the philosopher toward the superhuman — toward something like God-mode.

By contrast, theology begins not with the conquest of uncertainty, but with its acceptance. The world is fundamentally mysterious. And so we place our trust in a teaching — in the words of a spiritual teacher. A Jesus. A Buddha. Someone who shows how to live.

Their teachings are not proofs. They are practices.

This is the disjunction non plus ultra.

Poetics

Petrarch, Il Canzoniere (ca. 1330-1374) , 1-100

The Canzoniere, or Songbook, is a collection of 336 poems written over the final four decades of Petrarch’s life — from around 1330 until his death in 1374. Most of the poems are lyrical and compact, composed in his distinctive 14-line sonnet form. But the collection also includes longer pieces — 29 canzoni, which give the collection its name.

The poetry is exquisitely crafted. Formally rigorous, but rich in feeling. Its language is direct, musical, and full of emotional complexity.

As a young man, Petrarch fell hard for an impossible love — a woman named Laura. He idealizes her throughout the collection. The concept isn’t far from Dante’s Beatrice and, in many ways, Petrarch borrows that idealization from his poetic forebear. But Laura wasn’t a child or a heavenly figure — she was already married. And she died prematurely. Which made his love not only impossible, but deeply, irrevocably sad.

Reading the Canzoniere genuinely shocked me. I was not prepared for a 14^th century text to be so openly and intensely personal, almost confessional. Petrarch reveals his inner life without flinching. His bleeding heart, his wounds, the ache of unrequited love. His poems don’t resolve the pain — they report it. He lusts, he loves, he despairs, curses his fate, and he sings beautifully of his longing.

And yet this is no mere diary. Petrarch stands at a crossroads in Western thought. He is both a child of the medieval tradition of philosophical inquiry and a Christian. And what makes him truly important, beyond the sweetness of his language or the accessibility of his forms, is a genuine innovation: he applies the Christian emphasis on the motions of the heart to the literary and philosophical life.

That is, he insists that our inner experiences — our feelings, beliefs, opinions — arise from within and define who we are. They shape how we act. They matter, decisively.

And he gives them voice.

Aside from Augustine’s Confessions, and Socrates’ passing references to his daimonion (cf. Apology, Phaedo, Charmides), Petrarch is among the first in the Western tradition to truly explore the inner life. He treats it as a category of consequence, as something that must be listened to, shaped, and expressed. He precedes Pascal by three hundred years; Kierkegaard by five.

In the Canzoniere, as in his prose, Petrarch lets us overhear that interior conversation. He writes from within his own soul, and we listen as he struggles with longing, despair, hopelessness. The feeling of being trapped in a love he cannot relinquish. A love that weighs him down — and yet he cannot do otherwise.

Petrarch knows Laura is unattainable, just as he knows that time, memory, and death will undo even what he holds most dear.

Yet he continues — not in despair, but in a strange, luminous sorrow.

His resignation is not anchored in a faith that all will be redeemed; of this, he is certain, especially after Laura’s untimely death. And though his sorrow persists, he persists as well.

Why?

Because he knows there is beauty in the sadness of his expression. And he must carry that beauty forward, even as he loses everything.

There’s something profoundly honorable in the face of the certainty of failure.

There is no Aristotelian syllogism Petrarch can use to wriggle out of his fate. In fact, the opposite abides. Want the demonstration? Countless lines from his poetry. Metered conversations with himself about the longings and sorrows of his life. These simply reaffirm the certainty of loss.

Petrarch belongs to the unhappy many — the ones for whom redemption is not extended.

And yet he does not fall into nihilistic despair.

Instead, he writes.
He gives his suffering form.
He transforms it into music.

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I play
soft
and loud.

And what I play—
it encompasses everything:
all sounds and colors,
seen and unseen,
heard,
unheard.

For all—
but I am by myself,
in solitude,
utterly alone.

The heart
on the sleeve,
yet locked inside its sanctum;
I hide
as much as I reveal,
just like the gods I play.

The gods played the lyre
and plucked the strings of hearts,
while I strike many, many more:
more harmonious,
more dissonant,
deeper,
harsher,
harder.
Cacophonous,
or else sublime,
and whispering:
a water nymph’s seductive solfeggio...

For the corners of her mouth
are tantalizing,
And she draws you in
to drown in her beauty,
to be made lonely,
melancholy,
human—not divine.
Not bestial either.
Tearful, in a word:
for the flood of sound she pours—
that drowns the soul—
rises from the eyes.

You are to hear through sight
and see through sound.
The strings are pulled,
the hammers struck,
the chords ring out;
thus moved and clasped by sound
you see—and yet go blind,
and drown,
and die,
and then you are reborn.

Oh musa musicale!
I am your willing worshipper.
Grant me steady motion,
a seeing ear and clarity,
an overflowing heart
to share your melody,
to make the world
filled with wonder,
aching with strength,
charged with life—
yet calm,
and true.
May I perform
and not perform,
reveal
and veil.

If Instrumentality moved you,
I hope you’ll consider subscribing.
I regularly publish poetry, prose, music, and more.
All crafted with care and intention.

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I've yet to come across a song
That breaks me down so powerfully
As that of Gretchen at her Spinning Wheel.

She sits in place unraveling, pining,
Swelling, as her spools of love —
Desire, ache, and longing,
Enclose her ever gradually from the world.

Until despair’s catharsis overcomes her,
Mephisto’s magic overwhelms her:
Her Faust is gone
Forever.

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Let’s talk about a song written by a 17-year-old. I hesitate to call him a man because he was seventeen but certainly not a young boy either. Young man is a middle ground that doesn’t do justice to the subject matter I’m about to share with you. For, as someone with many more years than a mere seventeen, the piercing, shattering, and utterly devastating emotional articulation this 17-year-old captured overwhelms me every time.

Gretchen am Spinnrade was composed in 1814 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Middle class, non-noble, Viennese, without immediate access to an instrument, not particularly happy, pushed around by his family, though not quite an incel a far cry from a Chad. But already a master of melancholy, sadness, and tragedy. Of communicating those emotions in a composition of music.

So much for introductions.

The title of the song translates to Gretchen at her Spinning Wheel. The lyrics of the song are lifted from a poem of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Gretchen is the young woman whom Faust seduced, through the magical powers bestowed upon him by Mephistopheles. In other words, Faust made his deal with the Devil, selling his soul for superhuman wisdom. Faust’s lust for knowledge easily spilled over into lust for a beautiful young woman. So, in the story, Faust encounters her, casts his spell, and seduces her, ensuring her ruin (this is Enlightenment era Europe, after all). She succumbs, her innocence stolen, without any knowledge of the devilry behind Faust. Goethe’s poem is written from her perspective, post-seduction.

Faust has disappeared. She sits at her spinning wheel, longing for him. She knows he will never return to her, but she cannot help herself. Love is conquering her. She’s completely fallen for him, truly, completely – chastely. But Faust is not chaste. He’s poisoned her, so as she sits and pines, she loses her mind.

Musically, the theme Schubert gives us is one in near constant motion: as Gretchen’s mind spins, the spinning wheel spins and spins. Her mind unravels as she closes herself off to the world and into the corrupt memory of her experience with Faust. This spinning and enclosing and unraveling builds in tension and desperation until she explodes in emotional turmoil — not once but twice. Only to sputter out with a heavy heart. And I’ve not even mentioned the haunting melody…

Goethe was a master of the German language and among the greatest contributors to literature of all time. And with this song, a 17-year-old composer set the poem to music in a way that adds power and emotional insight that words alone cannot communicate. Devastating beauty to the level of the absolute.

Below is a link to a startling performance of the song, as well as an excellent performance of the version for solo piano, as transcribed by the great Franz Liszt — himself a Faustian, Goethean figure.

Enjoy! May you be wrecked and devastated, too.

“Gretchen am Spinnrade” — Sung by Wallis Giunta, Piano by Peter Dugan

Solo Piano Transcription by Franz Liszt — Performed by Dora Deliyska

If my words and — more importantly — this music moved you, please drop a comment, share your favorite devastating piece of music… or just let it break you quietly (and subscribe for more in silence).

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P.S. No promises, but I am thinking about making my own recording of this masterpiece. We’ll see…
Would you want to hear it?

For something so essential, so deeply woven into human life, it remains remarkably elusive. We spend our days seeking it, longing for it, yet when we reach for it, try to grasp it, or when we attempt to define it, to capture it in words… it slips through our fingers. Necessary for life, yet whatever I can try to say about it will be insufficient. I can explore it, progress toward it, invite you to reflect on it, but happiness is not a lesson to be taught or a formula to be solved.

I can say this much with certainty: it is easy – common, even – to write about wanting happiness, especially when it remains out of reach. Equally easy is to write about remembering happiness, recalling a golden past that now feels distant. But how do we speak of happiness in the present tense? How do we write, here and now, I am happy, in a way that compels? How do we write in a way that invites another to partake in that experience? Hardest of all, how do I write something that is happy, something that, in the very act of reading, evokes happiness itself?

Let’s dip our toes into the water with a simple question: Can happiness be shared?

Sharing? Ah yes, sharing. When I ask someone to share, it’s usually cuz I’m hungry. Maybe you’re hungry? Here, have half of my sandwich. But happiness is not like a sandwich.

Funny? … No? Well, let’s try again. Lock in.

We are taught to seek happiness. To find what makes us happy and to pursue it. This framing means happiness is something external. It’s waiting to be discovered, acquired, and possessed. It is out there, so let’s go after it. Be a go-getter. Take, for example, someone who lands their dream job. They’ve been working really hard, built a reputation among their colleagues, achieved successes, and created the idea in their minds that acquiring this role would bring them the life fulfillment they’ve always wanted. Sounds amazing, right? Not so fast. Isn’t this actually terrible? They’ve redefined life as their work and the work is based on a contract of servitude to an employer. Who cares how enjoyable the job is. It’s still work for someone else not even for oneself. The richness of life refuses to be contained within the confines of a contract. And – back to reality: most jobs are genuinely awful. We do them not because they fulfill us, but because we have no real alternatives.

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It gets worse, though. As we orient our lives to find and obtain happiness, we inevitably run into powerful barriers: The job gets in the way. Setbacks arise. Responsibilities pile up. Relationships drain energy. Exhaustion takes hold. Other people disrupt our plans, sometimes carelessly, sometimes cruelly. And so, many end up telling themselves that maybe this whole happiness pursuit is too much. So they lower their expectations. Shifting from happiness to something smaller, more manageable: momentary joy.

If I can’t be happy, at least I can have this or that. A little jolt of pleasure. A hit from something new. I’ll open a new credit card and buy stuff. Browse around, add things to my cart, build anticipation for the purchase. And soon – maybe even later today – the bright and shiny new thing will arrive.

(Thank you, delivery slaves! – Oh, wait…)

Then I’ll get that endorphin spike, just like in the commercials.

Until the luster fades. But it was fun enough, so you repeat.

It’s never satisfying, but for a while, it keeps the engines running. At least the treats provide a little burst of joy (a 2-pump-chump’s worth) before refracting back to normal, i.e., back to zero. (Or worse, despair.) Then the bill comes due, and suddenly, those small bursts of joy reveal their cost.

Master Debt has come a-calling, his loyal demons, Stress and Misery, trailing in tow.

There’s something profoundly sad about this, isn’t there? The cycle. The emptiness. The way we give in, knowing it won’t fulfill us but doing it anyway. We’ve all done it. We’ve all welcomed stress and misery into our hearts. We can feel it in ourselves. It lurks between the lines of much of what we read. And we see it in the sadness of others.

Now, why does this pursuit yield such sorry outcomes? The problem isn’t simply the shift from seeking happiness to chasing moments of joy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with acquiring something you desire. Nice-to-haves are nice to have. That’s obvious.

The real problem – that which breeds despair – occurs when these external objects, these little indulgences, rise to the level of necessity. When they become the sources of happiness. When fulfillment becomes confused with acquisition. When we convince ourselves that something out there will complete us.

And yet, disturbingly, this remains the dominant teaching on happiness.

You don’t need to dig deep to find it. Just turn on your television. Log onto Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. Visit a Target. It’s all around you.

Every. Single. Advertisement. You. Have. Ever. Seen.

Its lessons drilled relentlessly into our psyche. A pillar of late capitalist society. And not just in advertising. This teaching runs deeper. It’s embedded in the culture itself.

What are the consequences? For one, the persistence of despair. Isolation. It atomizes, separates, and distracts us. It convinces us that happiness is nothing more than what we buy.

It’s consumerism. It’s consumptive.

And it enables those in power to keep the distracted and divided precisely where they want them: disempowered.

There. I set out to write about happiness, and in just a few paragraphs, I’ve landed on politics. This isn’t to deny the political dimension of the discussion, as each step in our reflection has led to this point. And while I’m very tempted to go further here, we note the connection of happiness and politics but must save it for another meditation.

Still, keep this connection in mind. 😉

But when the cracks begin to show, when the realization dawns that consumerism is a hollow promise, something curious happens: we need a new belief about happiness. We do not want to give up on it as a possibility. But where can it be found?

If happiness cannot be bought, perhaps it can be remembered. Maybe it was never meant to be pursued at all, only preserved. And so, we take the next step: we neither confront our situation with clarity nor put in the effort toward a better state of being. Instead, we retreat into nostalgia.

Life is careless. Life is cruel. We need somewhere to place the ache in our souls, so we reminisce. Reconstruct. Idealize. Longing for a return.

For most, this longing often centers on one of two experiences, sometimes both. The first was during childhood – when I was free, when I had not a care in the world. The second was the first love – that time when we were young and loved each other completely.

But those days are gone. Life now feels heavy, yet I take some small comfort in knowing that, at least once, things were different. At least once, I was happy. Or as close to happiness as I ever came. It was the best I had.

If happiness was the carefree lightness of childhood, then love, burdened with desire, worry, and attachment, would be its opposite. And yet, when we long for happiness, we turn to both. We cling to the weightlessness of youth, yet also to the depth of first love. But happiness cannot be both carelessness and care. It cannot be both freedom and attachment.

So, which is it?

Neither. A memory is not the thing itself. The past is not happiness, only a reference to it.

Or if happiness is neither the past nor a memory, then what is it? How can we claim to have something we do not even understand?

Perhaps the better question is: Can we even "have" happiness at all? If happiness is not something we own, perhaps it is something we embody. Or, better still, something we participate in.

And so, we arrive at a new question: if happiness is not an object to be had, but a state to be participated in, how do we participate?

One answer: when we participate in the act of creation.

Happiness is so pregnant with meaning, so fundamental to our nature, that we long to create it – quite literally. The act of reproduction – the creation of a living image of ourselves – is without a doubt the most universal and most powerful. For a child is not merely a new, living, breathing, needful creature. A child is a living symbol, the embodiment of the love that brought them into the world. A parent’s joy incarnate. Happiness incarnate.

That is the reason for the union in the first place. Through it, the parents create a joy that endures past their own lifetimes. For most parents, the child’s presence causes a fundamental shift. Your life’s center of gravity and purpose realigns from yourself toward another. Your happiness becomes linked with your child – as they grow, flourish, and discover happiness themselves.

This connection with the child shows that parenthood is an ongoing act of creation. Creation did not begin just during conception and end with the child’s birth; it evolves continuously through the raising and shaping of a life. As the child grows, as the parents grow. To be a parent is to be bound, not just in love, but in responsibility. To take part in something greater than yourself does not mean control; it means participation. And that participation does not end.

Even if the bonds are strained, even if distance or hardship comes between you, even if the child turns away, the connection remains. You will always relate to them as the embodiment of happiness because you are their parent. A parent might make mistakes and even harm the relationship. But unless they commit the ultimate betrayal – disowning their child – the bond is never truly severed. And so long as that bond exists, the parent will continue to fight for their child’s happiness, for their life.

We now see both a lightness and a burden to parenthood. There is contagious joy in the child’s laughter, bound up with ongoing care and responsibility to prepare the child for the world. This is a burden that cannot be set aside. Happiness as parenthood contains the ethical obligation to one’s own. This is mandatory. It is the deepest of responsibilities.

Should we wonder why a parent will fight to death and beyond to protect and nourish their bond? No. The reason is clear: their child’s growth and flourishing – inseparable from care and responsibility – are precisely what bring parents true happiness. Even the mere possibility of their child’s flourishing fills parents’ souls with a joy that is pure and unshakable.

A parent’s life becomes life for the sake of their child, who begins entirely dependent upon the parents. Over time the dependency reduces in certain ways, but its powerful echoes remain forever. Joy and responsibility, the heaviness and lightness, become inextricably woven into the fabric of daily life to include all the struggles, the nonsense, the wins and losses, the pranks, the heartache and laughter. The rises and falls, the successes and failures. Unconditional love that is ethically required – unfree. Intensely personal and impactful, yet also given and shared.

This is the highest and most universal expression of happiness. It is as old as humanity and will persist as long as our species survives.

Parenthood encapsulates the past, present and future, touching the fullness of human life, for those who choose to partake.

If there is a higher power, parenthood is humanity’s expression as its image.

But there is an objection.

Sousarion, I have no children. Or I cannot have children. Or I do not want children. (Or I cannot afford children.) You’ve given us an example – not a principle. Something conditional, not universal.

And that is true. Parenthood is not the sole path to happiness. But this example applies, or, in the very least, is applicable to as many people as possible. This is why I selected parenthood: because it comes as closest to a principle for partaking in happiness.

But I grant the objection, nonetheless. Let us now explore happiness further and from a perspective: that of the individual. Not in rejection of others, but independent of them, for the most part.

Let us agree on the following: happiness will not arrive through the mere acquisition of things. We have all experienced the dead end of consumption. How it creates an unhealthy cycle of craving, anticipation, the burst of joy, and then refraction, dissatisfaction, distraction, craving anew, chasing the treat. Then repeat and repeat and repeat. Hamster wheel vibes, initially. Until you realize the control mechanisms keeping you lonely, locking you in to the wheel of despair.

It is a process we feel locked into not because it is true, but because it is the reality we are raised in. Society has embedded it so deeply into our way of being that it seems like the only way. Not just powerful; relentless.

Yet even within this cycle of despair, the commitment to happiness remains. Damaged? Yes. Distorted? Certainly. Misunderstood? Undeniably. Also – never fully extinguished. It may feel implausible, but it is not impossible, not beyond hope. Perhaps I cannot afford to reach for it, yet I cannot help but wish I could. And that matters. Because if the desire lingers, then despair has not consumed us. We hope, and so we may be closer to happiness than we realize.

If we cut through the haze, we can see it clearly: the treats themselves were never the source of happiness. They were only a means, a trigger, a gateway to something else: to feeling happy. And what gives that feeling weight is the state of being from which it arises. Your state of being. My state of being. That state we hope against hope to attain. In this light, the search for happiness takes on a new form. It is no longer about pursuit, but about realization; less a chase and more an inner awakening.

This is interesting. So let’s explore further. If happiness is something I feel, that makes sense. I want to feel good about who I am, what I’m doing with my life. The people in my life. All the rest. The experience of this feeling is my state of being. … Wow. Suddenly I’m getting all mushy inside. Didn’t expect this. But I liked that little ripple. I’d like to feel it more. I’d like to get into that headspace. To feel this way all the time. To partake in this state of being.

How’s it done? How do I attain it? How do I hold on to it?

Now let’s stop for a moment and think about what happened. We’ve certainly taken a step forward. You feel it. But hold on. Was the step taken by us? I’m writing and you’re reading. So, by you? Or by me? Am I following and you’re listening? Are you reading and I’m following? Who is being impacted right now? Who’s received what took place? – What you need to realize is that this state of being, or this feeling, if you prefer, is yours. Or it’s mine. Not both at once. Maybe not even the same internal phenomenon. Our hearts may be beating a little faster but it’s your heart and my heart, this time. Because happiness is personal. Deeply personal.

I might share glimpses of it with those closest to me: a dear friend, my partner, my children (if I have any). I might point them in the right direction, so to speak, do everything in my power to help, but I cannot hand it to them. I cannot baptize them in my happiness, nor can they in mine. At best, we are witnesses to each other’s journeys, as companions, servants to each other’s pursuits. By its nature, happiness is singular, personal. I will have mine. May you have yours.

From this realization, conflicts arise – not necessarily, but often enough. The struggles for happiness have played out for millennia, their echoes scattered across our oldest myths. From the divine struggle of Gilgamesh and Ishtar to Paris and Helen, whose kidnap set a thousand ships to war. Or perhaps you prefer the tale of ultimate woe, that of Juliet and her Romeo. The story cycles, again and again.

It is far too easy for the passions of envy, jealousy, covetousness, and avarice to poison the well. To see another’s happiness as a threat to our own, somehow. To resent, even hate, those whose happiness seems greater than ours. At times people kill to prevent another’s happiness. We know this, if not consciously, then somewhere deep within us, especially when we recognize just how fragile happiness can be. How easily it can be dashed.

But this can only be true if we return to mistaking happiness as something external. Let us imagine an extreme example: someone kidnaps a child. Later, the parents find the child murdered. That is happiness destroyed. There is no restoring it. No revenge, no justice will undo the loss. We are reminded that it is far easier to destroy than to create. This thought brings me to tears – that parents must bury their child. The child was their flesh and blood. Different from them, growing in life, but sharing life together. And that has been taken away forever.

I cannot image – much less describe – how hard it must be simply to endure. In such a case, perhaps happiness does dissolve into despair. Such an outcome would be unwished for, but understandable. A loving friend, partner, family, or community would do their best to comfort the parents and help in whatever way they could. I certainly would. It would not be enough. No one can bring the child back. Their first step is to accept that fact, then reconcile themselves to it. Everything has been damaged, torn, undone. Had there been a glow – it is gone. Accept these. They are reality. It is incommunicably sad, that’s true. Accept the sadness. Hiding from it, denying it will make you worse. If you accept, you can begin to heal. The scar will be there forever. The pain will never fully dissipate. You will wake up in the middle of the night and weep. That is okay. These are part of your life. Accept these. And then, after you’ve taken the time you need, allow yourself some space inside yourself for mending. For healing. Some repose. Cherishing and loving despite the loss – continuing to cherish and love because of the loss. Become stronger because you are finding a way to continue. Then let yourself begin to feel 1% better than you were. Your child would want this for you. Permit a smile. Shed a tear at the contagious joy their laughter brought to you. Reminisce and continue forward. Continue for them. Improve and heal. Make a little more room. Stay true to them. Let a little more in. Open yourself up to free a little happiness within you. It’s yours and for you. It will emanate throughout, bringing you strength and fortitude. Continue for them and continue for you.

No matter what happens, at least a little bit of happiness will always remain attainable. This is precious, sacred. Forever available, waiting to be acknowledged and accepted. For you to open your being to it. It is within you, waiting to be recognized as yours. This is why happiness is private.

Life is fleeting, and so easy to cut short. It’s delicate and sacred and precious. Happiness itself realizes this; in an act of self-preservation, it restricts itself from being fully shareable. In other words, happiness is meant to be personal. It is for me to partake in if I can achieve the state of being. No one else can fully replicate my happiness, for no one else is me.

By extension, no one else can fully partake in my state of being. It is mine alone. Those closest to me, that is, those who walk beside me, who see me unguarded, they might sense its presence, might feel its warmth. But it would be absurd to say, for example, that my partner’s state of being and mine are one and the same. While close, and with some degree of overlap, my state of being is not the experience she lives; it is an experience she may observe. We do our best to build each other up but we must partake in happiness alone. She must find her own way. As must you.

But how, then, does one reach this state? Under what conditions does happiness arise?
For me, when I am mindfully engaged in what I love – writing or music, in particular – it manifests naturally. But even beyond these, happiness is not confined to intrinsically spiritual moments of creation or activity. When I am engaged with another commitment, I may enjoy the activity less, but it does not follow that, in some way, I am less happy. Further, I can be equally happy in stillness. Simply sitting, reflecting on whatever I choose. Embracing the peacefulness of slowing down, of coming to rest. There is deep satisfaction in this, in the serenity of stillness itself.

At times, I need stillness to regain strength for something yet to come. At others, I rest simply to bask in the knowledge that my abilities remain at hand, ready to be actualized, yet content to be at ease. And even in action, I access this inner calm, this focus, this peace, moving through my work with the quiet assurance that I am doing the best I can in that moment – and that is enough. No one can take that from me. For I do not own happiness; I participate in it. I partake, I observe, I describe, and I share. Perhaps, in reading this, you too may find a path to your own.

A meditation on happiness is necessary but insufficient. Necessary, because if your life is not oriented toward happiness, much remains to be done. But insufficient, because no words, no matter how thoughtful, beautiful, penetrating, eloquent, or whatever, can fully encapsulate an experience so singular and personal. My examples are only that; they do not rise to the level of a universal principle. They are not exhaustive. They do not dictate. They do not prescribe. They aim, instead, to communicate something universally. To reveal an opening to you, a point of connection – a welcome to yourself. And if you find that connection, if these words have spoken to you in some way, then may they help. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, they have even been beautiful.

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Share Nostos Toi Noein

The sun departs, again,
As it has always done.
It brightens high, then dims,
And will, until its end.

Oh do you see?
This is the future, my dearest:
A harrowing repetition,
A sorrowful contradiction.

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Look, my dearest, out before you.
Behold this residue of the humans’
Foretold destiny – their doom:
Technology.
Disintegrating skeletons
Of concrete, stone, and steel;
Their toxic lakes and plastics will persist
To strangle Nature’s more
Harmonious ones
For millennia to come.

That was millennia ago.
Now behold the world
Without the human ego.

For we have our ego now.
Built over the remains
Of their crude innovations.
Have we learned their lessons?
The warning that their self-destruction
Constitutes?

Oh yes, my dearest, I know
You know these truths.
But we mustn’t merely know;
It is our task to live
According to the lessons
Which we claim we know.

For every new creation, every innovation,
Every thought, pursued or followed
To fruition; each and every one, enacted,
Is an alteration of what came before
Or already was. That means: what had
Already been, had had its essence
Tampered with, twisted, torn apart,
Perverted. My dear, this is the meaning
Of all creation, beginning with the seed.
Everything new disturbs what already is.
Those humans, dear, had merely been the first
To interfere too much, to pollute too much,
Pervert too much.
They viewed the problem of creation
Differently. Their teachers, too intoxicated
By poetry’s seductive pull. They did not
Grasp that to create means to pervert, pollute, destroy.

What have we learned? Are we evolved?
Improved? Superior?
My dearest, sadly, no.
We may be less depraved than they,
But in a way, perhaps, in truth,
We’re even worse than they.
Newer creations in a longer line
Extending out millennia.

Look at the sun, as he sets,
How he departs with measured grace.
Even dim, it’s still so bright.
Evolution is absurd.
Harrowing repetition,
Our sorrowful contradiction.

Until the ebb, when darkness
Merges with the light
And all will rest in silence,
And then will all begin again.

From everlasting to everlasting.

“To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a will to overpower, a will to subdue, a will to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), First Essay, Section 13.

I love Uncle Friedrich, I really do. He’s one of Germany’s greatest writers and, in my view, the most important philosopher of the past one-and-a-half centuries. (I will clash swords over this claim.) He communicated a deep understanding of the human soul, unseen, perhaps, since Plato. Without him, there would be no Freud, no Jung, no modern psychology at all. And that’s before we even touch on his impact on art, language, politics, metaphysics, evolution, history, and much, much more.

Now that I’ve lavished him with much glaze and deservèd praise, I have a retort. A jab back at him. A stab. Perhaps it will penetrate and draw blood.

Nietzsche’s passage is bold and unambiguous: Strength must express itself as strength. Power, by its very nature, must seek to dominate. To ask otherwise is to demand the absurd: that weakness should behave as strength.

If we expand a bit, Nietzsche is writing in the context of his larger critique of Christian morality, particularly its elevation of meekness as a virtue and its inversion of traditional power structures. He argues that Christianity has falsely rebranded weakness as strength, leading to a moral system that shackles the strong and lionizes the feeble.

But is he correct?

Did Christianity, as Nietzsche claims, masquerade weakness as strength for 2,000 years? Did the Catholic Church – arguably the most politically powerful institution in European history – exercise humility and meekness as it waged crusades, deposed kings, and maintained inquisitions? Christianity’s rhetoric may have venerated the weak, but its institutions operated on the very principles of power and domination that Nietzsche praises. In this view, those principles and deeds were far from noble – they were corrupt, even evil.

This raises a deeper question: If power and domination define strength, does that definition hold at all levels? Do the same rules apply to individuals as they do to institutions?

Nietzsche’s argument applies not just on the macro level (world religions, institutions, systems of power) but also on the micro level, at the scale of the individual man. If we accept his framework, then the logic should remain consistent: strength in the individual should also be expressed through conquest, struggle, and the bending of the world to one’s will.

But is this truly strength? Must strength only be defined by dominance? Is there no interplay between strength and what is commonly seen as its opposite?

And what if Nietzsche’s premise, this instinctive drive to overpower, actually conceals a deeper drive?

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Power, Misunderstood

The true power of a man – an ἀνήρ, an hombre – is exhibited not by his capacity to dominate, but through his ability to extend kindness.

Why? Because domination is, paradoxically, an expression of insecurity. A man who seeks to control others confesses, through his very need for control, that he fears them. He relates to them as potential threats. To overpower, to subjugate, to crush – it is the weak man, not the strong one, who feels compelled to act this way. His strength is a false armor, his aggression a mask for his frailty.

Such a man has been molded by Thomas Hobbes, who, in Leviathan, envisions a world where every man is locked in war with every other. His political theory is not one of strength but of perpetual fear. Power, in the Hobbesian framework, is nothing more than the preservation of one’s own weakness.

And Nietzsche? He builds upon this Hobbesian foundation, taking the fear of powerlessness and elevating it into a virtue, transforming it into a key component of the will to power, the relentless drive to dominate. But in doing so, he exposes the very weakness he claims to reject. This key aspect of his philosophy reveals itself not as a celebration of strength but a confession of its absence.

In the end, his own life provided the ultimate contradiction.

When Nietzsche saw a horse being beaten in the streets of Turin, he did not stand idly by, nodding in approval at the master’s exercise of strength. He did not revel in the whip’s crack as an expression of life-affirming power. He ran to the creature, weeping, throwing his arms around its neck in a desperate attempt to shield it from suffering. He defended the weak against the strong – and then collapsed into madness.

What does that tell us?

Contrast this with the man who acts with kindness.

When a man extends kindness to another, he displays something far more powerful than brute strength. He demonstrates confidence, self-mastery. He signals that he sees no enemy in the other, that he has no need to assert himself through violence or intimidation. In offering kindness, he acknowledges the humanity of the other, recognizing their potential, their dignity, their worth.

This is what true strength looks like.

It is such an incredible tragedy that humanity, for the most part, remains unable to relate to its fellow human beings in this way.

The Collapse of Western Culture and the Absence of Kindness

Mistrust, fear, selfishness, relentless domination drives… these are among the most insidious sicknesses that have brought Western culture to the brink of collapse.

And yet we still refuse to question our hyper-individualism, our self-destructive consumption for the sake of endless treats, the casual surrender of our private data to the broligarchy with hardly a huff, or our out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude toward the world beyond our doorstep. As a result, we are lonelier and meaner, less happy and more atomized, advantage-seeking yet whiny little betas, shallower and stupider, cynical yet easily manipulated. We are unfocused, unable to sustain relationships, clumsy, unsubtle – self-loathing.

And what is missing? The healing principle of kindness.

Not just kindness in words, but in action. Not just the performance of kindness, but the embodiment of it.

An act of kindness communicates something fundamental: You are seen. You are felt. You are included.

It is an invitation. A welcome, an extended open hand. Unconditioned. A hope that you will accept. And while a perfectly acceptable response might be the simple, “thank you, no,” very few will reject it outright with hostility. Why? Because kindness is universally intuitive, universally intelligible. Regardless of language, culture, or creed. Kindness is understood for what it is – not as an act of self-interest, but an act which recognizes our humanity.

And that is where its power lies.

Kindness is the force that humanizes power. Without it, strength remains rooted in fear, expressed as mere brutality. But armed with kindness, power becomes something far greater: the ability to uplift the world. To guide it toward peace, toward happiness.

That is the highest expression of strength.

If this piece resonated with you, subscribe for more philosophical reflections on power, meaning, and the human experience.

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Aristotle, Prior Analytics (ca. 330 B.C.E.), Book II, Chapters 1-27.

As I outlined in my first Sousarion Reacts, Prior Analytics lays the foundation of logic: defining the structure of a logical argument, the construction of a syllogism, the principles of consistency and validity, and the analytical tools needed to break down claims and evaluate their soundness. While highly technical, the text is relatively straightforward and intelligible – especially for Aristotle. In sum, Book I establishes the theoretical groundwork.

With Book II, Aristotle shifts from theory to application, testing the strength of his logical framework. Calling it “applied” is a bit misleading; he’s not taking these models into a courtroom or laboratory. Rather, he applies syllogistic reasoning to other theoretical problems. Among the many topics he investigates are necessity (e.g., given objects A, B, and C, does B necessarily follow from A?), possibility, hypothetical reasoning (e.g., if we assume X, does Y follow?), direct and indirect proofs, and the distinction between induction and deduction as methods of acquiring knowledge.

From the first word to the last, it’s dense, technical, and difficult. And yet, it’s also undeniably nerdy. I can picture Aristotle standing before his students at the Lyceum, grinning as he lectures – famous lisp and all – on whether the major premise of a perfect syllogism can be converted into a negative syllogism while remaining perfect. That’s the flavor of Prior Analytics. It’s a nerd’s paradise. (Pushes glasses up nose ridge.)

Does any of this sound fun? Probably not – I’ll grant that. But there’s something remarkable about this book, something more fundamental than its logical precision. Here’s what I mean:

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Take the classic syllogism:
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Reading it doesn’t make you feel more logical. You don’t need to reflect on it. Why? Because the answer is intuitive. You already know Socrates is mortal before you even finish reading the syllogism. Aristotle presents numerous such examples, and in many cases, the conclusion is so obvious that analysis seems unnecessary. But this is where his genius lies – he walks you through the reasoning step by step, proving why your intuition is correct. He provides the proof for why we rely on intuition in the first place.

Think of learning to ride a bicycle. At first, you have to focus on each element: balancing as you push forward, gripping the handlebars correctly, sitting in position, pedaling at the right pace. But once you master it, you no longer need to think about every step. It becomes intuitive. You simply ride. It would be exhausting (to say the least) to stop and relearn the mechanics each time you got on a bike.

Aristotle does this exhaustive work for logic. He shows you why you intuit what you know, revealing the underlying structure behind what feels immediate and natural. And, of course, he doesn’t stop there: he sprinkles in logical puzzles, lacunae, and paradoxes to challenge you, to captivate and frustrate you, and to test your own ability as a logician.

That’s what makes Prior Analytics – even in its most tedious moments – ingenious and special.

Keep Your Friends Close

Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now (2020).

Yanis Varoufakis’ Another Now is an enjoyable read. I now better understand why he chose to present his ideas in the form of a novel rather than a formal political economy treatise. Fiction makes his vision more immediate, more accessible – closer to the level of the everyday. More importantly, it allows him to sidestep the rhetorical and structural constraints of academic argumentation and instead illustrate his ideas through a world that, while speculative, feels plausible. This is the book’s core conceit: Another Now isn’t just an imagined alternative – it’s an adjacent one. A version of the present that, given a different set of historical choices, could very well have been or could still become our own.

The novel follows three main characters, each brilliant in their own way, each shaped – if not outright defeated – by the political economy of neoliberalism. One of them, a tech genius, inadvertently develops a machine that opens a wormhole between parallel realities. Through this device, they communicate Q&A messages with their existential doubles in an alternate timeline – one where the 2008 financial crash set history on a radically different course. Instead of reinforcing the structures of global finance as it did in our world, the crash in the Other Now became a catalyst for systemic reform, upending corporate dominance and reshaping economic and political life in ways our protagonists can scarcely imagine. Through their conversations, we, as readers, are given a window into this alternate reality – one that Yanis suggests is not just different, but achievable.

And that, folks, is the plot – if you can really call it that. I'm going to be blunt: it’s silly. Hollow. The premise is contrived, and it begs the question – did we need 50 pages or so of setup for this? Probably not. But if you read it with an open mind, you can let yourself be carried along. These pages serve a purpose: they create a conceptual space where Yanis can introduce his economic vision without immediately bogging the reader down in dense theoretical arguments. By constructing a world identical to ours up until 2008, he makes his alternative feel tangible. This isn’t utopia in the abstract – it’s a version of reality that could have existed and, by implication, still could. That’s certainly Yanis’ hope (though, of course, he’d likely call it a thought experiment, hedging his bets).

I’m stepping into hot-take territory here, but I have a strong suspicion about the ideal reader and ideal reading environment for this book: it’s adult bedtime reading. Hear me out. Picture yourself at the end of a long day. Your boss has been on your ass over something utterly mundane, which somehow escalated to a crisis. After putting out the fire, you trudge home, eat something simple, zone out for an hour in front of Netflix, then wash up and slide into bed. You grab Another Now, lean against the headboard, and Yango Varo (Yanis’ narrative stand-in) spins up an alternate timeline where neoliberalism is no longer king, and your boss no longer wields the pettiest of all petty power over you. It’s a sweet idea, coated in just enough sugar to go down smoothly – but it’s also a tactical decision. Another Now isn’t meant to be dense, academic, or footnote-heavy. It’s designed to be palatable.

And I think this approach is smart. It allows him to reach the widest possible audience. Rather than exhaustively arguing for his utopian model over 700 pages, he meets the reader at a minimum viable product level from a storytelling perspective: a novel structured as a Q&A. And Yanis is a generous conversationalist – he articulates his ideas with enough clarity and internal logic that they pass the plausibility test, not just within the Other Now but in our world as well. The book is also digestible, such that, as you sit against the headboard, you can actually picture yourself in a world that has stamped out the techno-feudal enslavement we currently endure.

In Another Now, institutions exist to maximize freedom, ensuring that people can follow their passions without fear of financial ruin. The state isn’t just a safety net; it’s an active force enabling human flourishing. Institutions work for everyone, not the monopolists. The market remains, but it operates in the service of every individual, investing in every person rather than tilting the scales toward those who already control capital. There’s still failure – business ventures crash and burn – but failure is never synonymous with ruin.

I won’t go into further details here, in part because I think Another Now is worth reading for yourself, and in part because I’m studying Yanis’ economic works more deeply for future writing projects. But for now, I’ll just say this: the book is engaging, imaginative, and – if you let it – deeply thought-provoking.

Keep Your Enemies Closer

Julius Evola – Ride the Tiger (1961), Chapters 16 – 30.

Ride the Tiger is a dangerous book. Here’s why: it is ruthlessly insightful about aspects of modern life, its style is compelling (at times intoxicatingly so), and its critiques, though often severe, are laid out with such clarity that it’s easy to find yourself nodding along.

To be fair, there are areas of agreement. Evola critiques the dissolution of personhood, the widespread disbelief in the soul, the universalization of modern science as the sole arbiter of truth, the reduction of art to commercial trends, and the increasing reliance on recreational “drugs” as an escape from the meaninglessness of modern existence. Many of his conclusions falter under scrutiny, but his diagnosis of contemporary spiritual malaise – both individual and collective – rings true.

It is certainly the case that many today are less equipped to cope with modernity, despite the material improvements of the last two centuries. Few of us will starve to death. Few of us will spend our lives in a desperate struggle for physical survival. But with these fundamental threats removed, we are left with more time – to think, to dwell, to fixate on what unsettles us. We are atomized, lonely, raised in broken homes and leading broken lives, often carrying a quiet disappointment in ourselves, an unease we struggle to name.

We seek solace in consumerism, entertainment, curated distraction. But these, too, have been commodified, hollowed out, stripped of the meaning they once held. Even our artistic passions – music, film, painting, poetry – are no longer refuges; they are market-tested products, reflections of a past we never lived, designed to provoke nostalgia rather than renewal. Simply log onto Instagram or TikTok. The result is not only dissociation but a growing bitterness: toward others, who appear absorbed in their own curated illusions, and toward ourselves, as passive spectators in lives we no longer truly live.

Evola, writing long before social media, nonetheless exposes the same forces of decay. His descriptions of a society strangled by its own rottenness remain unnervingly relevant.

His solution, however, is both limited and inhumane. He rejects what we would today call humanism, or even basic compassion for one’s fellow man. Humanity, in his view, is a lost cause. With the death of God, the abyss opened, and humankind fell in.

As the slow or swift collapse of civilization unfolds (Evola, no doubt, would have seen AI as an ominous catalyst), Ride the Tiger offers no promises of salvation – only survival. And not for all. In Evola’s view, physical existence is irrelevant; true survival is spiritual, and it is reserved for the rare “traditional” man. While his broader commentary places this figure within a social context, his explicit recommendations are solitary. The traditional man does not rebuild the world. He does not thrive. He merely endures.

One of the keys to the traditional man’s survival, according to Evola, is through his intrinsic separation from the decay of society. This does not necessarily require retreating into the desert, the rainforest, or a Buddhist monastery. He may reside anywhere – a city, a town, a farm – because his separation is spiritual rather than physical. He maintains a “traditional” outlook, privately preserving the belief systems of the ancient past. To “ride the tiger” is to live within society without being consumed by it. This teaching bears a striking resemblance to certain Christian and Buddhist principles: to be in the world but not of it, or to exist within impermanence while freeing the spirit in pursuit of enlightenment.

On its own, this notion of spiritual resilience is neither particularly controversial nor harmful. But Evola does not stop there. His traditional man is not simply detached from modernity; he is defined by his rejection – and at times, outright contempt – for modern values. Racial and gender equality, cultural pluralism, and social progress are not mere aberrations in his view but evidence of civilization’s decline. As anticipated, Evola’s traditional man is a racist, a misogynist, and an opponent of universal dignity beyond his own nation or people (e.g., Italians for Italians, Germans for Germans, Japanese for Japanese). He rejects modern music – jazz, for instance, he decries as primitive and animalistic, an art form unworthy of tradition because of its Black, i.e., African, origins. He likewise dismisses sexual liberation, arguing that it has stripped women of their natural essence, leaving them hollowed-out shells of their former selves.

Evola’s view of women is particularly revealing. For him, female liberation is not an expansion of agency but a corruption of femininity. In stepping outside the confines of the demure, subordinate homemaker, he argues, women have been forced to model themselves after men, erasing the very qualities that once defined womanhood. Unlike his broader critiques of cultural decay, Evola’s perspective on sexuality cuts to the heart of both the physical and the spiritual. Here, in the most intimate of human connections, he sees modernity’s corrosion at its most acute. In his view, the modern woman must confront the hollow, purposeless existence that modern men already endure. Thus, she comes to hate herself even more than her male counterparts – who, in turn, have become weak and undesirable. This collapse of identity, he claims, has stripped women of their very essence, leaving them as soulless vessels. And the implication is clear: to restore the feminine, women must return to the traditional order, with all that entails.

Evola’s critique of modernity is both piercing and deeply troubling. He accurately diagnoses many of the spiritual and societal ailments that plague us – alienation, atomization, the loss of cultural meaning – yet his “solutions” are not only inhumane but fundamentally regressive. And yet, his analysis of rootlessness, disenchantment, and cultural decline remains unsettlingly relevant. The challenge, then, is to extract the useful critiques without succumbing to the allure of reactionary despair.

That, in the end, is why Evola is worth reading: not to adopt his worldview but to sharpen one’s own against it. Ride the Tiger is not a guide to retreating from the world but a study in how to exist within it – without surrendering to either decay or hatred.

Conclusion

Aristotle teaches us how to think. His logical analysis shaped intellectual history for 1,600 years, laying the foundation for the Enlightenment – and even today, his influence endures.

Yanis, another Greek, challenges us to imagine an alternative to the techno-feudal dystopia in which we find ourselves. He not only critiques the present hellscape but dares to chart a way out, one that promotes both freedom and equity.

Evola presents a third category: the cautionary thinker. His critique of modern decay is incisive, yet his solutions collapse into the very nihilism he claims to resist – only dressed in the language of tradition. Ride the Tiger is a case study in the dangers of extreme reactionary thought, a lesson in how valid critiques can curdle into destructive ideology.

To ride the tiger, in my view, is not to retreat into an imagined past but to stand firmly in the present – without surrendering to either despair or domination. Meaning, connection, and the refusal to become either predator or prey: these are what matter.

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“… this friendship which together we fostered, as long as God willed, so entire and so perfect that certainly you will hardly read of the like, and among men of today you see no trace of it in practice. So many coincidences are needed to build up such a friendship that it is a lot if fortune can do it once in three centuries.”

– From de l'Amitié, Montaigne, Essays, Book I Chapter 28

Michel de Montaigne and Étienne de La Boétie – a friendship so rare, it comes but once every three centuries, or so Montaigne claimed.

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After much reflection on which thinker should inaugurate this Vox Philosophorum (voice of the thinkers, artists, writers, philosophers) space, I returned to Montaigne. I opened his Essays and turned to On Friendship.

We are all inclined toward friendship. More than that, we need it – genuine friendship. This quote is beautiful for many reasons, but most of all because it declares an ideal: a vision of perfect friendship that serves both as an aspiration and as a reminder of its rarity. Such a bond, Montaigne tells us, is an act of fortune. A gift, not a guarantee. And by stark contrast, even the more common kinds of friendship prove to be rare.

Montaigne devotes much of On Friendship to distinguishing different human relationships, building toward the picture of something singular: the friendship he himself experienced, one so profound that, in his words, “our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them.” Such a thing, he claims, appears – with luck – maybe once every three centuries.

An ideal, then. So rare that one might call it fantastic. But Montaigne insists it is not. His friendship with Étienne de La Boétie, he tells us, was precisely this, an instance of that highest form. Fortune had granted it to him. We, reading this centuries later, might lament our lack of luck, while still admiring Montaigne’s.

However, my point is not to wallow but to aspire. Even if such an ideal is more or less beyond reach, the effort to approximate it is meaningful. True friendship proves itself through action, often in ways unimaginable until the moment arrives. And when it does, the proof is in the certainty that our friend will act on our behalf.

Why?

Because the person who helps, who comes to our aid, proves themselves to be our friend. A true friend. One who cares for our well-being – physically, mentally, emotionally.

This is the kind of friendship I hope to cultivate with you, dear reader. With each of you. Ideally. To what extent that is possible is another matter, but in theory – and as far as possible in practice – I make myself open, extending my hand, and welcoming whoever happens upon these words. I say this honestly. Openly. Wholeheartedly. I want your friendship. I hope for it.

I want to connect with you. I want you to read my work and grow with it as I grow too. I want you to tell me whatever you wish to tell me – so that I may grow from what you have to say. To offer support as needed, to inspire as opportunity allows.

If that leads you elsewhere, I will wish you well. But my hand will remain open to you, as a friend.

If I can convince you to stay – to believe in my words, my writing, my music, my art – then I will try to convince you of other ideas, positions, and outlooks as well.

Today, we are lonely and atomized. While we may never meet in person, we can connect genuinely, not merely para-socially, through words and the conversations they create.

Through care, we build solidarity. Through solidarity, we strengthen one another. And finally, through care and follow-through (my definition of friendship), we build power.

In recognition and disappointment at the loneliness and atomization that define our time, I offer this quote as an act of defiance. A hand extended in friendship. A reminder that human connection is essential, and that I remain committed to it. Committed to forging bonds that transcend distance and circumstance. A gesture of hope and welcome.

This invitation is open to all.

And so, I invite you to read and reflect on my work. May it stir and provoke, amuse and unsettle, dishearten and inspire. May it awaken your conscious reflection and that of your class, for it will challenge systems and point toward exits from their prisons. I hope to forge friendships with you—held in appreciation, admiration, and gratitude.

In unity, we strengthen. In disagreement, we learn.

“This is my practice: do as you see fit.”
– Terence

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He made a mess of his bowl and the floor with drool – then licked it up. Slowly, patiently, meticulously. He regained some strength. Shortly thereafter, he wanted to fetch the ball, even sniff the bush once more. But after three passes he collapsed. Exhausted. Surely in pain. But his eyes remained alert.

A couple hours later his scrawny little skeleton of a body lay spooned against the master’s. Pressed against him. One of many little acts of love the guy constantly expressed to him.

His breathing was still strong – deep, steady. Almost healthy. But every breath exposed each rib and disappearing abdomen.

With every breath, air rushed in through his nose and out again, stirring a distinct scent to all corners of the room. In other words, spooning with love for the master carried with it the flush of rotten air. “I’m slowly dying,” sort of air.

Sleep refused to come. For sleep depends upon the slowing down, the stopping of the motions in the mind, the mind’s nightly flirtation with nothing and nothingness. But this time it would not comply. The mind wished to think, not slip away and lose. Or, said otherwise: to recall, to recollect.

Recollection would soon be all that’s left.

Stop thinking; sleep.

Think; live.

Thinking is a motion – restless, ceaseless.

What was there to think about?

When he arrived home for the first time, the master placed him in a shoe. The little guy was tiny, too small to climb out. He struggled – white and delicate and soft. Barely eight weeks old. At eight weeks a human baby cannot climb, can hardly move. Too helpless even to struggle. Incapable of much, except to cry and eat and shit and stare into the mother’s eyes. – To bond. The motion of the infant puppy at eight weeks is similar and different: he, too, ate and shat and stared, and even struggled with his motions, but he did not cry. That came later. Children cry from birth but later learn it is shameful to cry, especially before their peers. We’ll run to help a crying pup. But when our own kind cry, we lose consistency. We harden. We silence the heart’s motions inside us…

Another thing to think about: Foreknowledge. The master is like Prometheus. Prometheus gave fire and foresight to humankind, and for this he was punished. Zeus forbade us that latter gift. We were meant to live with hope – not the certainty of our end. And yet, the master knows the time and place the little guy will meet his fate. That knowledge is forbidden for oneself, yet we may wield it over those in our power. And when such knowledge is ours to wield, it is not stolen - it is decreed. The master did not take this knowledge; he made it so. Quietly, guiltily. A prophet’s burden, but not a prophet’s gift. The weight of knowing is heavy…

Yes, thinking is a motion. Thoughts are ineffable but also carry weight. The weight of guilt ahead of a heinous and ineluctable act.

That night, these thoughts remained in motion, circling back and forth. A dance of unrest, endless, unbroken through the night.

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The little guy grew his heart, having watched and studied human beings, perhaps as well as we study ourselves. He was drawn to his master, and his master to him. He needed to be touched affectionately. The fur at the back of his head was soft and always welcomed a gentle rub. Most of the time that would suffice. Eventually, he learned to press his head into the palm of the hand, insisting on a little more, right at that spot. Don’t stop. I love you, master. Let me please enjoy.

Life is beautiful. Life is loving. Is loving beautiful? Is Beautiful loving?

Life is short. But according to which standard of measure? His life, the little guy’s, was wonderful, emotional. His life was made of loving, all-surpassing loving. And all that follows in the wake of love: I love you, master, let me please enjoy.

Let me enjoy it. Can it be only me?

The little guy was loved by his master, the family, and his master’s mother. He loved her most, in fact, and forbade another to show her affection in his presence, particularly the master’s father. Jealous he was. Very much so.

And why not? As far as he was concerned, it was only fair. The master’s mother doted on him and pampered him. Let him sit upon her lap as she conquered crosswords from the New York Times and shook her head at the idiotic editorials. Or when she lay upon the love seat in the television room, to watch a bit of Downton or a genuine classic, like Keeping Up Appearances, the little guy insisted that he snuggle right beside her. And not merely snuggle – press himself into her side. Asserting his affection, he would curl up and sleep, knowing and believing in the place he held beside his favorite.

But if, some other one might grab the mother’s attention, the little guy would growl. And if that other happened to be the father of the master, then teeth would show, the nostrils flare, the fur would bristle, and the growl transform into a jealous snarl.

He was hers and she was his.

In turn, the father of the master played the role of woman-stealer. With mock theatrics, he would express his love right in front of the little guy - half arousing her, half attacking her. The parental pair still enjoyed the sort of “tickle me and make me giggle like a teenager” affection, particularly after returning home from his day at the office.

Most evenings, the master’s mother would have the little guy on her lap. He would sense the approach of the car, barreling down the driveway, and come to attention - alert, acknowledging the creature who had infiltrated his territory. Not necessarily vicious, but certainly ready to protect his love.

Then the door opened. The father entered, and the little guy, already deep in his protect-the-damsel game, would first shift into his other role - ecstatic greeter. He had known the father’s scent from a mile away but relished the act of greeting just the same. It made the game more worthwhile, for the master’s father always played along, acknowledging the little guy’s gusto at his return.

But with the little guy, no game was ever just a game. Every match had a strategy: protection, distraction, and devotion.

The greeting was short-lived. The father would bestow forehead rubs and tickles behind the ear, all while commanding the little guy to express his joy at his (the father’s) return. And the little guy, elated, should have returned to his defense - but no. Not yet. Not quite. Ahh, right there behind the ear. Ahh. That’s it… Wait! Hold on. The father moved toward his wife. The little guy’s demeanor changed. Now his eyes lock onto the attacker. Teeth bared. Ears pressed back. Fur bristling. He growls. The father grins and moves closer. The growl deepens. He meets his opponent’s gaze – mocking. The growling becomes a snarl. Elation has transformed into fury. His heart is racing. The father can see it through the little guy’s heaving rib cage. His hand extends further towards his wife, taunting. The poor little guy is stricken. The father places his hands upon his beloved. They embrace. Overcome, the little guy barks, snarls. He takes a step forward – bristling with indignation, jealousy boiling over. Another step. Paws click against the floor. The sound of …MMMMMMM… fills the room, exaggerated. He makes it known: he is enjoying the embrace. The poor little guy nearly loses self-control. He steps between the standing parents’ legs. Pressing his head against the legs, teeth bared. About to bite.

– He does not bite. The father shifts his legs and steps away. The little guy stumbles but feels he has won. Loyalty to the family means protection, not mutiny. The father grins again. He scrunches his fingers – open, closed, open, closed – in a taunting motion to his adversary. He prolongs the poor little guy’s jealous suffering.

Regaining his footing, the little guy stands between his beloved and the disturber of the peace. His fur still bristles; eyes burn – aflame but also sad. Why must he endure such human cruelty? – No. It is for her. He must protect. He must not attack.

The father’s hand scrunches again, extending his game of mockery. He begins to laugh. Suddenly, the mother feels this teasing has gone too far. She tells him to stop. The husband grins, like an older boy whose teasing never stops because his younger siblings have yet to learn to ignore him. And so, he ignores her order and continues.

In retaliation the mother bends down to pick up the little guy. An effort to calm him and soothe the jealousy. But this is not allowed. The father steps in to halt the move. –

Oh no! What happens next? Was this an attack? To what extent should the lover defend his beloved? Attack, indeed? The game is through.

Amidst the confusion, a stern assertion quiets the little guy. He transforms from defender of his love into a guilty criminal. Come here, the father orders, taking a seat on the floor. The little guy steps forward, tail between the legs – apprehensive, nervous, expecting punishment. But no snout is struck. No punishment comes. Instead, the father points to his chest and repeats the command. The little guy climbs into his lap, places his front paws onto the father’s shoulders and presses his pounding chest against him. The poor little guy repents. He does not understand but knows that lines were crossed, somehow. And somehow, he was found to be at fault. Now let us make up for it with a forgiveness hug…

The master had sat off to the side, watching the scene unfold. He knew each move that would be made, for it had happened many times before. You see, the master, too, had tugged at the little guy’s heartstrings before. Seldom, though, for it made him feel guilty afterwards. It is in our nature to be emotionally manipulative. At times. And it causes pain. It’s wrong. It’s best not to twist the cords of love – with anyone. Especially not with his little guy.

But there were many times the master needed hugs like these. Times, when human hands were too impure, the meaning of their touch – too filled with caveats, hesitations, and unspoken conditions. When the little guy stood on his hind legs, pressing himself into the chest or neck, the power in that moment was pure. The emotion, raw. The intent, entirely clear. I love you, master. I know you’re hurt; feel better. I love you, master. I would like to play. I love you, master. Perhaps another one? I love you, master. May I enjoy your love?

Quiet companion in thought and study.

Thinking starts again and sleep recedes – again.

Concentration pulls the mind and heart tight.

Where do the souls of humankind and beast fly?

Perhaps the bond between man and beast must be reimagined.

The little guy had much to teach. No bond built on love denies this.

The master spends much of his conscious life lost in thought. And oftentimes, the little guy would trot into the study to take a seat beside the master’s wooden chair, his quiet request for attention. Nothing. Just thought. The little guy would look up, tail swaying in slow rhythm, trying to catch the master’s eye. He’d wait, then murmur a concerned hello, a kind of whistle, a wheeze and a whine. With no response, the patient beast would rise again, tail still moving in steady arcs, crouch, and launch himself upon the master’s lap.

This delightful ambush always shattered the master’s spiraling thoughts – bringing him back to his best friend. The little guy would let out a bark with glee, tail wagging excitedly, triumphant at breaking the spell that too often overtook his master. He could tell that some strange, mysterious power had captured the master, and he always tried his best to free him (the master) from its grip.

Play. The little guy would hop back to the floor, speaking insistently. The master must follow - out of the study, down the hall, down the stairs. A glance back, always making sure. They’d reach the kitchen, loop around the island, and bound outside to the green lawn. A system: tennis balls by the door, a backup under the bush. Darting in their direction, the little guy would corral the nearest, free of drool, and lay it at his master’s feet. A shrill demand. Persistent insistence. And so, the game began: throw, fetch, repeat.

Too many times to count, he tore across the lawn with lightning speed, locked onto the ball. A living lesson: the power of the mind when action follows. A joyful act, repeated without end - except for a pause, an outstretched plop beneath the shade of a garden tree. To catch his breath, to let his soul soak in the joy of motion, knowing his master had granted him this boundless affection.

But the game was only joyful if both were in tune, if they played in rhythm. The one tossing the ball with a different spin, a new direction, a longer arc. And the other: catching it on the fly, after a bounce, leaping, listening - anticipating its fall.

Create the game together - or risk disappointment. The little guy never let him down. Always ready. Go until his legs gave out. Go until exhausted. Then rest - just for a moment. Then go again. Constancy. Hearts full of joy. Together.

Can thought alone nourish the soul with joy?

To the little guy, joy was meant to be shared. It couldn’t be owned. It couldn’t be hoarded. His heart, his being – wholly his master’s. Only together could they fill their souls with joy. And it was always best to share. The sharing occurred between the two. It brought them joy. A toy was nothing without the master’s hand, tugging against his clenched jaws, resisting, playing back. Throw-and-fetch, tug-of-war, neither could be played alone.

Food and shelter. Walks after dinner. Cuddles in bed. A rub behind the ear. The words, “good boy.” To be pet, to be master. None of this was possible alone. And all else that came with these bonds. As it should be.

Somehow, the little guy always knew when to rush upstairs. When to speak, when to place the ball, the toy, even a bone sometimes, beside the master’s leg, as if it were an arm, not a leg. As though the leg might lift the object, shifting the focus of the master’s focus back to him. That he might share again. And take his mind away from sorrowful thought and solitude.

Is sadness inherent to the nature of thinking? Thinking together is an oxymoron. One thinks alone. Think for yourself. A thought is born in a single mind, one at a time. Only once a thought is fully formed can it be shared. Only once it is processed, shaped into words, can a thought be spoken. What happens then is a command: Think the thoughts you are led to think. Who leads? It cannot be another – yet thinking does not lead itself, only to more thoughts, more thinking. What sparks thought? Others. Interaction. Sharing.

The best game is saved for last. He’d find a ball inside the house, corral it between his jaws and place it in the master’s hand or by his foot. Then, he’d dash for the main staircase of the house, which had a landing halfway up. From the landing, he’d bark an order down to the staircase base, demanding the ball be hurled up for him to catch. Upon receiving the toss, the little guy would place the ball upon the foremost stair, give it a nudge with his snout, causing it to bounce back down the stairwell. His focused, insistent head would bob in tandem with the falling ball, as it made its way back toward the master’s place below. Repetere in infinitum.

This game was unlike the others. It wasn’t one he had learned; it wasn’t taught. It was his own invention, a game entirely his own. And perhaps that’s why he loved it most, even more than fetch-and-chase in the grass. It was his idea, his joy, his creation.

He took so much delight in this game that when some other commitment took the master away, the little guy was known to let out a disappointed howl. Until once, while in the middle of a catch, he yelped. His hindquarters buckled. He crumpled in a heap upon the landing’s rug. No sudden jerk had caused the rug to slide, for it stayed stationary. Nor had the ball been tossed with some peculiar, parabolic arc. In fact, that ball had been caught and then he met the floor. It was his mouth. Drooled and swollen, sore. He’d lost a tooth, a little blood, and enough adrenaline to need a break. The first time in his life.

Infinity was never meant to be. Life forbids it – outside of thought or numbers.

His end began with a cracked tooth, a swollen jaw, and a telling symptom: drool. It flowed, it stank. In weeks, he lost two kilograms, his energy, another tooth. His once-white legs faded to a discolored taupe: as he lay on his cushion, the drool spilled, dried, and stained his fur. His decline came swiftly. And it was crushing.

He'd glare up at his master in frustration but would always allow his legs and jaw to be cleansed. He knew the act was one of care. Still, he’d wince, and more than once, he let out a yelp when the cloth brushed against a particularly painful spot along his gums. Most often he managed to hold back and let what the master felt needed to be done be done. The little guy was fighting – fighting as hard as he could.

Life was to be filled with joy, not disintegration or decay. It was against his outlook; against the way he’d led his life. For a while, a little aspirin in peanut butter and lots of love provided him with some aid against the disease.

However, the stink refused to stay contained. Mounting proof of his decay. Eating away at him. Chipping at his weight, his poise, his strength, his confidence – but never his master’s affection.

A couple months went by. The bones began to show. He could not eat by himself. He needed help. He could not jump into his master’s arms. He could not court the little one-year-old girl pup who’d grown so attached to him.

Worst of all, he understood. It shouldn’t have been this way. But it was. He’d look into his master’s eyes, communicating that he knew. Inevitable.

The master tried. He took the little guy to a vet named Barksdale – a storybook name, yet real as could be. Canine periodontitis, disease. Incurable. That was that.

At least the veterinarian showed she cared. Not enough, of course. But something. The little guy looked up, eyes in pain and full of trust.

An antibiotic medication was prescribed by Barksdale, to be administered to the loving skeleton. This helped. He regained some weight. Some energy, too. The stink and drool dissipated. Until the medication ran out. Then the disease returned – worse than before, spreading fast, consuming more.

The little guy held on. He understood. Most days, he would retreat into his bed, sleeping through the ache, hiding from the smell. Pets sleep most of the day anyway because that’s what they do; his was with a purpose. It was intentional.

Apparently, intentionality requires a mind, the human mind. And apparently no other being besides humans has a mind. Therefore, no other being but the human being is capable of intentionality. This is a grave logical and metaphysical fallacy.

He must have known the disease would consume him. Nevertheless, we all put up a fight. The body will fight, the soul as well, to curtail the diminution, to prevent the diminuendo to death. And so, he did. He fought with all his might, with all the love held in his heart.

He did his best. And more than that.

It is tempting to say it was his duty to his master. A duty that expresses itself as – and through – love. Sleep to muster up the strength to be there when his master returned from the focus at the desk, or from errands beyond the territory’s domain. Strategize how to hold on. Speak when he returns or wakes you up with a rub behind the ears. For as long as possible, be ready to chase the ball. Offer it and even when the strength is spent, show you still would if only you could. He did his best.

This was intentional. This was love.

But while he slept, one day, in early Fall, as the rosemary leaves quietly brushed against the bricks of a house outside the windy city, the decision was made. It was not an easy one. The vote was democratic, five to one.

Barksdale was called again. An appointment was set.

Morning came. The master and his brother left the house, holding the little guy close to the heart. It was a short drive. He was weak but alert. He showed no worry, only pain and trust. The appointment was for nine.

They waited in the sanitized room until the little guy was gently lifted from the master’s arms for the preparatory injection. Upon being taken out, the master was asked if the rest of the process should occur in their (the master’s and his brother’s) presence or completed entirely in the other room. The master insisted that he hold the little guy until the very end.

So let it be done.

Not fully sedated, still aware, the little guy was gently placed back into his master’s arms. He had a little catheter placed just above the stifle joint of his right leg, the one he’d used for shaking hello.

The master looked into his eyes. Somehow the little guy knew. His loving eyes revealed it.

Barksdale quietly returned with a tray on which a syringe was placed. She looked at me. I looked back. Then at him. Then I nodded, held him closer, and whispered, “You are such a good boy, Milo. Such a good b –” – And it was done.

Life left. He was limp. Eyes shut. Heavy.

The master laid him on the table in the center of the room. They wept.

This ache will not leave. An immaterial throb. So heavy. Sure, external responsibilities push the ache to the background, but the guilt remains, eating at my mind.

Perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps it had to be done. Perhaps it made me more of a man – to hold a beloved being through the final transformation.

What makes it feel like murder is time. It felt too early. When the time is right, all must pass. But death too soon is robbery. To rob life is to commit murder. And I robbed him, even if his end was near.

What is cruelty? Cutting short the time deserved – turning life into harm. Too soon was cruel. Had he lived too long – too long to wag his tail, show affection, express joy, play – even for just one pass or two – that, too, would have been cruel. Life is forgiving when it ends at the right time. But growth, growth happens when forgiveness is impossible.

Growth carries a heavy, heavy price. I so wish I could rupture space-time, conjure his presence. And then bend down, hold him close, and offer him the hug he deserves…

A lifetime of love in his eyes.

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