Said sweet nymph to the youth.

So she has told me and how well you know me Herald!

How truly beautiful yet horrifying that of me it is so oft said I prefer heated passions to reasoned truths. And to this value I have clung. Despite its subjectivity, despising its hypocrisy when displayed in "the other." I risk great error so that I may know that my own heart lives. I will always strive to remain pneumatic and never become static. Yet death steadily approaches.

What a reckless path I have chosen. Yet is it not choice that makes me?
This is for another string.

So, and refreshingly early in this banter, we have begun to define the characteristics of the new axioms. And it is my hope that you will find this term, "the new axioms," one worth dwelling on before accelerating.
Let us pause here for a moment as I struggle to extract these pearls from your last communication.

Prudence, Sincerity(perhaps most of all), a state of no Regret, Cognizance, Discernment and a Liberty most binding: these must and will be the marks of a new journey.

Would you venture with me that these are our new capstones? Or do I remain entirely too open?

Calm Now: Lest We Be Cavalier Once Again

For we have been at this crossroads many times past and never did will travel as infidels. On wide paths with narrow companions, we hurried and bustled behind false prophets and even falser gods.

Heartily, I heralded half-truths, yet I have no regrets. Still, for now, I feel... prudence will lead us more toward Sincerity. And it is Sincerity now I shall seek.

In grains have I fallen into the earth. This is where there are tombs...
I have lost everything and been unburdened.

So, let us bear fruit... Let us be resurrected... Let us have liberty.
But let us do these things in time with cognizance and discernment.

If you loved me you would subjugate fratricidal elitism - - and would that be a return to the best?

Esteemed Herald,

Our journey has been too long. Too taxing on such youth and vitality. Barth wrote, "'N o matter,' I've heard some say, even as they gulped their last: 'The night-sea journey may be abusrd, but here we swim, will-we nill-we, against the flood, onward and upward toward a Shore that may not exist and couldn't be reached if it did.'"

I believe that in our early days at the academy we, or at least I, often formulated this sentiment with a few phrases:
1. "Human nature, if said phenomenon exists, is essentially tragic."
2. "Humans are capable of initializing inquiries that they are not equipped to answer."

Whence cometh these mysteries? Furthermore, if we accept the above maxims from our starry-eyed eras of idealism, then why do we continue to stare into these Luciferian-Promethean abysses? Why rattle our fists and propel our phlegm towards Zeus and Jehovah? For surely the answers do not come back to us. The signal transmits but the black box doesn't even return static. Silence is on the line.

[He throws his head back, removes his filter and turns the volume all the way up!] For we have not enough FAITH!

Why the epistemological quest? Why the torturous integrity if the rewards are not forthcoming?

I must abandon this string: it makes me weak, yet it forces me forward to the new axioms.

That a god was unjustly chained. That another was illegitimately crowned. And that both of them were merely an expression of a battle into which we were conscripted unawares before we had the pugilistic impulse to resist such bondage. A battle that essentially predated our existence. And later became our being: our temporary essence. Our transitory meaning.

But we have inspected the foundations and found the hollow. In spite of the blood spilled in their making, they have been removed by one single breath. The spirit of deification breathed into the void. We have sought out the new axioms They are not as numerous as the former.
Yet, they are more sure and tested by a indescribably superior matrix of control.

The challenge that now lays before us is vast. We've torn down the tomb and the crater beneath is now visible. Some myth must be rebuilt or a vitality must be forged of materials not yet discovered in a fire brought down from Olympus. And the wielder of this flame could remain bound if he is constructed inadequately.

Despite the ambiguity, let us charge forward with courage, honesty and great self-interest.
For that is the only path that leads to a sure footing. All others lead into the annihilating darkness.

Yours intensely,

Ocean

The Funhouse - chained to a rock in the midst of the waves.

it's myself I address. If I am, who am I? Such are the questions that beset my intervals of rest. I can believe them because they are absurd.

victims of their unremitting joie de nager. I have seen the best swimmers of my generation go under. Numberless the number of the dead!

[I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,]

Yet these same reflective intervals that keep me afloat have led me to wonder, doubt, despair-strange emotions for a swimmer!-have led me, even, to suspect . . . that our night sea journey is without meaning.

I continue to swim--but only because blind habit, blind instinct, blind fear of drowning are all still more strong than the horror of our journey.

[Ginsberg]
The rest: John Barth, "Lot in the Funhouse, Night-
Sea Journey"
Munch, "The Scream"

Stipes Primitus

As this is my first weblogging venture, I will take some time to deliberate on the precise tone and subject matter of this site. I only hope is my abilities as a writer have not atrophied.

Let this be cathartic.