Teacher: Ever to the child in man, night neighbours the stars.
Scholar: She binds them together without seam or edge or thread.
Scientist: She neighbours; because she works only with nearness.
-- Heidegger, Gelassenheit
Me? I stitch various things together (even if they don't go together), here, in "the polar night of icy darkness and hardness" (Weber). So here's another attempt.
Sins? There are many. Too many to count. And, yes, sometimes the grievous sin of despair. For which, I believe, rightly or wrongly, the only medicine is foolishness.
By that logic, to be destroyed (utterly) is the necessary precursor to new life (resurrection). We must not regret but hasten the downfall of outmoded forms, so that new ones can come to light. But sometimes I do get rather caught up in the regret.
This is totally different from madness. Here is modern madness: In the name of human rights, both humans and rights must be abolished! With that pernicious project, I want no part.
A Silly Tale: I was once in a rickety book store in Riga, looking through some dusty German books. An old man said to me, in German, with some obvious disgust, pointing to one side of the store, "All these books are in German." Then, pointing to the other side of the store, "All those are in Russian." I mumbled something stupid like "Ja, natürlich" and I thought to myself: "How horrible: ravaged from the West; then raped from the East. Nothing else left." But then I thought, "Still here, nonetheless." On the way to the airport, in a taxi, the driver said to me, in broken English, "Look. The sun. How beautiful."
What a heartwarming reflection.
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