Short Update

The Internet has been down here the last couple days so I have really enjoyed the loosening of that fetter. This, the Internet, is the opiate of the masses. I hold constant vigil over a rotation of newspapers and my email. Its a tremendous waste of time.

As it is, I have done a lot of reading over the last couple days and found it a very pleasing experience. I was going to pepper this post with quotes from Beyond Good and Evil and On the Geneology of Morals, but I won't. Instead I want to say that my runs have been very very good lately and I am thrilled with that. My stomach has only been marginally bad...though it hurts now, and I have found that my memory is profoundly disturbed by my lovely stomach pain. When it hurts I cannot recall I time that it has ever not hurt...when it doesn't hurt I cannot seem to remember it ever hurting to badly. I think I could write a 400 page book about my relationship with my stomach.

Finally, I bought two very lovely little books by a Lebanese author named Kahlil Gibran today. He lived most of his life in the US I think, but most of his writing is in Arabic...a tremendously beautiful language that can stand toe to toe with French and Italian any day of the week, although I have no pretensions of understanding any Arabic...my editions are English. The books are entitled The Prophet and The Beloved, respectively. They are written in a kind of loose prose-poetry that holds the reader to a quick, light, and fluid pace...despite the pacing, and I am certain almost anyone can read The Prophet over tea in the morning, there is considerable profundity to the thoughts. I read The Prophet this afternoon and hope to read The Beloved tonight. Here is a quote from The Prophet to acquaint you with the style...I call it a Zarathustrian, but more consistent formally then Nietzsche was in that work.

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.