I open the book to Emerson’s, “Spiritual Laws.” Write off he says, “When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty….” Oh Emerson! What is this “embosoment” in beauty? Who speaks in such words? I look up this old word, “embosomed” — “to shelter closely; to hold to your chest or breast — to hug perhaps.” Does beauty hold a person’s life and shelter it? Where is this beauty? You put it in Nature and discover the Spiritual Laws. “For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite has stretched in smiling repose.” Oh Emerson, these grandiloquent words, falling so far from this sadness. His friend, Amos B. Alcott, remarks, in his journals, “Beauty, beauty — this it is that charms him…hence all that mars or displeases this sense…is of no interest to his mind. Emerson seeks the beauty of truth: it is not so much a quest of truth in itself as the beauty thereof.…”
To look upward perhaps; to reach the heights of this inspired man (Emerson); to have faith, believe; to find one’s vocation, one’s being. An influx of positivity, a flood of positive emotions embosomed in his words. But what of the one who has lost all? Get up! He would say. There is one Mind, one Soul, and you were meant to be part of it little big man. Oh such fine words. What of the homeless, the lost, the hopeless? Have you forgotten those that need help so? Where is your compassion, your heart?
Why is there something that feels missing from your words? It’s as if you play the drums loudly, a rhythm never resting, a run so high that never falls into a lull, a light that never darkens. Every sentence a poem of flourishing, boldness, strength. You speak with what you speak of. Does it reach the poet of poverty? The poet of the poor and brokenhearted? The drumbeat of your heart, of all you have overcome. The mood of these times seems to be one of sadness or despair; was it so in your times too? Your power seems great. You cast light around you. Am I in your shadow? You speak of subtle things that seem to exist no longer, at least in my life; the infinite simplicity of inexhaustible nature, the genius in each and all. The magnificence of your expression, your speaking with the wonder you speak of, so hard to relate to in the space of now.
You lived through the bloody Civil War; were gone before the horrors of the next century. Is it any wonder now that people despair? The wonders of Nature, giving way to local emptiness and global destruction. Do we turn away from so much demise? This present was in your unobtainable future, and your children’s children stumble lost among the ruins. Still you speak to them, after the end, of a beginning.
How do we reverse the direction of time? Rediscover your truth? Was it a perfect dream? In the North American wilderness rose a dream of freedom and wonder, when you could speak what you were feeling, and feel what you were speaking. And hope rose like smoke to paint the sky.
I rise, heavy with the weight of the great, invisible resistance; barely able to move. The poet of the pulpit, Emerson, so distant, so incredible. I go on, oppressed by that intractable melancholy immovable. Looking for the place of least resistance; a path of being. How is Idealism? Reborn in the northern woods. Was it illusion holding them? The truth of it? I cannot go on. I go on. Why did wisdom wait so long? Coming when the game is done. All the shoulds pass sentences abound. Idealism, from German towns, across the Atlantic, falling on fertile ground. The agony of centuries belies the vision. Yet we read, write, hope. Still pages to go before I rest. Oh transcendentalist! Thinking it so does not make it so. There is a counter force, oblivious to poetry, ecstasy, miracle, mind, spirit. A brutal force that laughs at foolish platitudes. But still you assert the primacy of consciousness, the infinity of the over-soul, the divine vocation of each and all. See the heavens of seasons in the deepness of the sea. This connection, so delicate, the undeciphered hieroglyphics of the soul. How speak in unbelief, such frayed phrases as “soul.” Every word implies a contradiction. Or in your words, “Every sentence is an apology for itself.”
I leave you now, oh transcendentalists, the night is late, the moon is high, and I have a ways to go. It was a pleasant evening; you all present a curious phenomenon to our day. If you only knew what transpired in the centuries from your day.
Well, I’m not sure I wish to know. Our present seems full enough. You say our philosophy has been displaced, has been rekindled now and then. What is the Zeitgeist then?
I wish I knew. I will hold description at bay for another time. You may be surprised. Goodbye for now, gentlemen and gentlewomen. Your spirit has heartened me. As I walk toward the door, the members are reading from their works in progress. I linger for awhile to catch Emerson’s words: “He has seen but half the universe who has not been shown the house of pain.”
Another, by the name of Henry, reads a bit from the last chapter of his book called, “Walden”: “However mean your life is, meet it, live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.”
Nice words, I think, stepping out into the night. Idealism, once flourishing, here in this oh so practical country. Was it some sort of anomaly? I look at the moon and make a note: remember to tell them how humans have walked on the surface of that distant orb.
Puzzle
If you play dice the standard number of dots on each side of the die is { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}. Now if you role two die, then count the sums of the face-up dots, there is one way to roll two: {1, 1}; two ways to roll a sum of three: {2, 1}, {1, 2}, and so up to six ways to roll a sum of seven, then back down to one way to roll a sum of twelve. Now suppose you have a pair of “crazy dice” with non-standard numbering. One die has the numbering {1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4}. What must the numbering be on the second die in order to be isomorphic to the standard dice when you roll the crazy dice? That, both sets of dice have the same number of ways to get any given sum?
Answer to last week’s puzzle
The given numbers form a magic square with zero as the magic sum: first row: 1, 2, -3; second row: -4, 0, 4; third row: 3, -2, -1. This is isomorphic to the game of Tic Tac Toe. Thus you may block any move that sums to zero.
