And in Conclusion...

I suppose this is the last thing before I begin again ... riverrun (does it son, you know).

I would like to, once more, bring up the quote from Speak, Memory that Dr. Sexson read on our last day.

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern - to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal

I would like to pose a question, one which the answer I do not know. What is the motivation for the atoms to move? All matter is built on these infinitesimal building blocks. All matter matters because that is what we are... it is all we know. But what is it that causes our atoms to move, and not just move but relentlessly continue? Even after our hearts stop beating the molecules continue. Why is it that Absolute Zero is only a theory?

The motivation. What of the reading from Frye? What gives language the power to be aesthetic? The language of love. The Bible is written in it, Nabokov certainly wrote in it, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ovid, etc. etc. It is the things that resonate with us. Music can resonate, a speech, a book, a sunset, the complexities of life, each other. Something in them matches something in us. The ultimate solidarity. Love in kinship with love.

I submit that the molecules have no choice but to keep moving. It is the power of love that motivates. And I'm not talking about the cheesy, sappy love of cheap romance flicks. True love. Not the human version, but the ultimate muse, the thule ultima of the spirit. Love.

And with that we look on, and we look back, and we look around us. And we skate on a tension film of thin ice, to revel in our solidarity.


With this perspective I don't hesitate to delve into my past, to search for lost time in the dark reaches of my mind, well because... (riverrun, you know).