Phantasmagoria
So go to the man in the street And ask him, Or do not, “what time is it” and he will answer with a smile and a grin and let the silence trickle in and offer the answer in a stare at the clock that hangs above the head of those who walk and wait wait and walk
Oh, do not dig for meaning. It cannot be found The ground has been tilled the answer, if that is what you call it is not a seed is not a flower nor a weed it cannot hide behind a tree but is the crack of a tongue on ivory pillars
that pink ship upon a tempest’s roar whose foam contains thoughts of the dead committed to the deeps and drowned
but like the lemonade and tea sipped now between you and—
see: the floral and the fronds the pulp of truth it will be sip it sip it and see the churning of that ocean in a cup stirs the dead long drowned up and up shoreless as a mountain peak they rise and fall and rise again and readies the tongue to join their sleep
Oiled hair, seaweed red and brown: braided fast, as knots learned from sailors drowned.
Muse, your music is so sweet and low But your tale we all know Sing, then, for our hearts know no fill Lest your siren call turn hoarse and shrill We will not turn but circle round And round ’til currents rage and we drown
I have dared, I have dared And tasted what the pastor meant
She comes and goes so softly, So quickly it would seem She is another, not the same She commands a spoon to sing And instructs with even temperament, “It is so nice to have you here, Dear, don’t you think so? Dear? Don’t you think so? Dear?” Deduction speaks with lips alone Induction hears the unsung tone “Did you hear me,” and “Did you hear me? I do wish you’d respond” Dear, dear, the understanding knows More than the knowing apparatus shows.
[Further reading: Book 3, page 49]
Augustine says the best place to begin is in the middle, where we are, in media res. Molinism holds that God’s middle knowledge reconciles man’s free will with divine knowledge. Middle knowledge is knowledge of counterfactuals, of the way one would act given another circumstance; whether this is consistent with knowledge from the beginning, whether it is sufficiently unique from necessary truths, is to be considered; the interesting aspect is in providing man with the means to wrestle with the contingent and the necessary in terms of time.
One of the questions concerns the nature of a choice: having made it, how does that choice continue to show itself? Certainly it is not by the bringing close of the merely physical, of the choosing this or that and keeping this or that close. Rather, and much more difficult is the matter, the choice shows itself as something to be sustained, and the only way this is possible is to make, again and anew, the choice again.