Sayings of Heraclitus 96

Nature loves to hide. 

IMAGE by David Driver 

Proverbs 5:7-14

[7] And now, O sons, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
[8] Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house;
[9] lest you give your honor to others
and your years to the merciless;
[10] lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
and your labors go to the house of an alien;
[11] and at the end of your life you groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
[12] and you say, "How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
[13] I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
[14] I was at the point of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation." 

IMAGE: Gerard van Honthorst, The Procuress (1625) 

The Lost Art of the Mix Tape

Nostalgia is a difficult thing, because there can be both good and bad in it. I walk a fine line whenever I think back to the old days, because sometimes it refreshes the spirit, and yet sometimes it poisons the soul. 

I do, however, have no qualms about revisiting one of the most sacred rituals of my youth—the blessed mix tape. 

My son rolls his eyes when I mention this, saying, "Yes, old man, we now call them playlists." 

No, young man, that is hardly the same thing. The mix tape was an act of love, which was far more than the sum of some tunes you lazily strung together. There was hard work involved. You had to dust off the vinyl, set the stylus just right, and constantly check the levels. 

You chose your songs wisely, since it wasn't just a matter of clicking and dragging with your mouse. You looked deep inside, and you asked yourself how your picks reflected everything about who you were. 

The mix tape was a total expression of all you held dear. To give someone a mix tape had almost the same weight as a marriage proposal. There was a profound art to it. 

I made at least fifty of them for the lost love of my life in college, though I now suspect they were only played when I happened to be around. 

I later fell for an artsy and bohemian girl, and I spent three whole days compiling her first tape. 

I'm fairly sure all of those cassettes are now in some landfill, but the memory of creating them is far more vivid to me than any image of their faces. 

During my Wilderness Years, I had no friends, so I compensated by making mix tapes for myself, including a set I planned to listen to on a final trip to my homeland of Austria, where I somehow intended to die on a mountaintop. While I never made that trip, those four tapes remain some of my most prized possessions. 

One day, I finally met a nice girl, and I had one last opportunity to do a final mix tape. I knew it would be the last one, for the CD had finally replaced the cassette as the way we listened to music; there was absolutely no romance in burning a CD. The young lady, however, still strolled around with a Walkman, and that was my way to her heart. 

Men are such pathetic creatures, right? Especially the sentimental ones. 

I stayed up all night putting this one together. The trick was always to hand it over like it was no big deal, even as I was completely twitterpated. 

I eventually married that woman, and who I am now would be impossible without her. The tape sits on our dresser, next to an ancient boom box I keep only for the purpose of playing that one darn tape. 

To this day, the ideas and values expressed in my musical choices are a source of pride. If you want to figure out who I really am, this collection will give you a good clue. 

• • • • • 

Crowded House, "Weather with You", from Woodface (1991) 

Julius Caesar, and the Roman Empire, 

Couldn't conquer the blue sky. 

Blur, "London Loves", from Parklife (1994) 

And words are cheap when the mind is elastic. 

Capercaillie, "Claire in Heaven", from To the Moon (1995) 

Up here I see a new tomorrow. 

Level 42, "Play Me", from Forever Now (1994) 

All the women of my dreams, 
Were the kind who lived beyond my means. 

Kevin Gilbert, "Goodness Gracious", from Thud (1995) \

Goodness Gracious not many people care,
Concern is getting scarcer, true compassion really rare. 

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, "Sunset Road", from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (1990) 

October Project, "Something More than This", from Falling Farther In (1995) 

Whatever you fear,
Whatever you hide,
Whatever you carry deep inside,
There's something more than this. 

Donald Fagen, "Countermoon", from Kamakiriad (1993) 

At every pay phone
There's somebody cryin'. 

Thomas Dolby, "Close but No Cigar", from Astronauts & Heretics (1992) 

I remember, I remember, I remember
The promise in your eyes,
As black as the night I drove you to the airport. 

Echolyn, "One for the Show", from As the World (1995) 

As the world shakes it on down,
Some learn to dance and others just drown. 

Marillion, "Dry Land", from Holidays in Eden (1991) 

In all the tine that I've known you, 

You've been so edgy and nervous. 

Swing Out Sister, "Don't Let Yourself Down", from The Living Return (1994) 

Trust in love and you'll have no regrets. 

King's X, "The Train", from Ear Candy (1996) 

Don't try to take the ride, sit back and let it rain. 

Paul Weller, "Round and Round", from Paul Weller (1992) 

Movin' up to collect our prizes,
Sinkin' fast into life's surprises. 

Clannad, "From Your Heart", from Lore (1996) 

Wise beyond your years,
Made my life more worthy now. 

Spock's Beard, "Waste Away", from Beware of Darkness (1996) 

Some people are like gravy
Spilled on God's Sunday shirt. 

Jamiroquai, "Virtual Insanity", from Traveling Without Moving (1996) 

And it's a wonder men can eat at all,
When things are big that should be small. 

Phish,  "Down with Disease", from Hoist (1994) 

Waiting for the time when I can finally say: 
This has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way. 

Peter Gabriel, "Steam", from Us (1992) 

You know your culture from your trash, 
You know your plastic from your cash. 

Iona, "Irish Day", from Journey Into the Morn (1996) 

It is here that time has granted, 
That the light should still burn on. 

And just for a lark, here's a YouTube mix of the entire bloody thing: 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRvgjypMPqhpHn75gN1oJLOzxIafUxGfc

Epictetus, Fragments 3

It is a shame that one who sweetens his drink with the gifts of the bee, should embitter God’s gift of Reason with vice. 

IMAGE: Hieronymus Bosch, Beehive and Witches (c. 1500) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.4

Marcus Cato the Censor, whose existence helped the state as much as did Scipio’s—for while Scipio fought against our enemies, Cato fought against our bad morals—used to ride a donkey, and a donkey, at that, which carried saddlebags containing the master’s necessaries. 
 
O how I should love to see him meet today on the road one of our coxcombs, with his outriders and Numidians, and a great cloud of dust before him! 
 
Your dandy would no doubt seem refined and well-attended in comparison with Marcus Cato—your dandy, who, in the midst of all his luxurious paraphernalia, is chiefly concerned whether to turn his hand to the sword or to the hunting knife. 
 
O what a glory to the times in which he lived, for a general who had celebrated a triumph, a censor, and what is most noteworthy of all, a Cato, to be content with a single nag, and with less than a whole nag at that! For part of the animal was preempted by the baggage that hung down on either flank. 
 
Would you not therefore prefer Cato’s steed, that single steed, saddle-worn by Cato himself, to the coxcomb’s whole retinue of plump ponies, Spanish cobs, and trotters?
 
 I see that there will be no end in dealing with such a theme unless I make an end myself. So I shall now become silent, at least with reference to superfluous things like these; doubtless the man who first called them “hindrances” had a prophetic inkling that they would be the very sort of thing they now are. 
 
At present I should like to deliver to you the syllogisms, as yet very few, belonging to our school and bearing upon the question of virtue, which, in our opinion, is sufficient for the happy life. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
It’s nice to see a Stoic praising Cato the Elder, and not just his great-grandson, Cato the Younger, who became a bit of a poster child for the school. 
 
While some found the Censor to be severe and self-righteous, there is something to be said for the way he promoted a life of uncompromising integrity and austerity. However stuffy it may sound, I would maintain that the Romans were at their best when they kept things brutally simple. 
 
Nowadays, it is the car, and not the horse, that helps us to distinguish between the codgers and the dandies. You can learn a lot from what a fellow drives. 
 
For the whole decade I knew him, my music teacher drove a dilapidated 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass, in a nauseating shade of green, which was already at 60,000 miles when his roommate gave it to him, in place of back rent. I, for one, found it quite charming, for the very reason that it had none of the usual charms. 
 
“It gets me wherever I need to go—no drama and no fuss. If it breaks down, I kick it and mess around under the hood. If I can’t fix it, my neighbor, who is a decent mechanic, looks it over, and I trade him a few cases of beer for the work.” 
 
Here was a man who had it together. He felt no need to impress anyone, because he knew exactly what he was about. 
 
Years later, our university got itself a new president, who paraded onto campus with a Tesla Model S, one of the first to be built. He immediately reserved a prime parking space for himself, and he had a charging station installed—at the school’s expense. He was fond of polishing it daily, while taking every opportunity to explain how he was now saving the planet. 
 
“You really should get one, you know. Your children will thank you.” He frowned when I reminded him how the price was twice my salary, and that most of our state’s electricity came from burning natural gas and coal. 
 
Here was a man who most certainly did not have it together. His entire identity was based on crafting an image. 
 
What does it say about me if I place my worth in my car, my house, my clothes, or my trendy politics? As Boethius said, by enslaving ourselves to worldly things, we make ourselves inferior to them, below even the status of a wild beast. For all of his surliness, I will take a Cato over a Caesar on any day. 
 
It won’t be enough, of course, to merely complain about the money grubbers and the glory seekers. Seneca rightly moves on to some of the Stoic arguments on why virtue matters more than swag. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

Jacob's Ladder 13

Domenico Fetti, Jacob's Dream (1613) 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 24

Alessandro Magnasco, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (c. 1730) 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 292

Q: Where is God? How can we get to Him? 

A: There are pearls in the sea, you must dive deep again and again until you get the pearls. 

So there is God in the world, but you should persevere to see Him. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.3

I suppose you call a man rich just because his gold plate goes with him even on his travels, because he farms land in all the provinces, because he unrolls a large account-book, because he owns estates near the city so great that men would grudge his holding them in the waste lands of Apulia. 
 
But after you have mentioned all these facts, he is poor. And why? He is in debt. 
 
“To what extent?” you ask. 
 
For all that he has. Or perchance you think it matters whether one has borrowed from another man or from Fortune.
 
What good is there in mules caparisoned in uniform livery? Or in decorated chariots and 
 
“Steeds decked with purple and with tapestry,
With golden harness hanging from their necks,
Champing their yellow bits, all clothed in gold?”
 
Neither master nor mule is improved by such trappings. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
Whenever Seneca starts to go on about the vices of the covetous, I am tempted to pick up the pace of my reading, assured that I have heard all of this before. 
 
This is a mistake, however, since such a confirmation is exactly what I need to hear, again and again, as a remedy for the very moral wavering I described above. While I didn’t much enjoy it at the time, it was practicing my scales, over and over, that made me a passable musician, and it is now a regimen of frequent counsel that might help me to become a better man. 
 
My students sometimes complain when I repeatedly remind them to correct a certain mistake, yet I gently point out that if they had already fixed it, then I wouldn’t need to nag them. I am well-advised to follow my own advice. 
 
When I was in danger of becoming a maudlin drunk, it always helped me to recall the gory details of the last binge, so there could be no confusion about the outcome. Likewise, as I am enticed by the promises of trinkets and trophies, I deliberately consider the pitiful fate of those who define themselves by their riches. 
 
Even as the affluence can produce an exterior splendor, how does it reflect our interior merits? Wealth does not make a man righteous, just as poverty does not make a man wicked, and no amount of hemming and hawing can change this fundamental fact. 
 
If you reply that property may provide the means for countless good deeds, remember how the goodness must come from within the soul to begin with, and why the virtues can thrive both in prosperity and in privation. 

To be rich is one thing, but to want to be rich is quite another. 

 
The princes are in just as much debt as the paupers, though it is a bit easier for the pauper to walk away from it all with a clean conscience. On the proximate level, their big money is usually tied up in dicey investments, and on the ultimate level, their very comforts are always in the treacherous grips of Lady Fortune. The deficit is moral, and not merely financial. 
 
To keep it simple, I turn to the old phrase: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” The fixation on appearances is itself a fatal flaw, far worse than walking through the world with empty pockets. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Heinrich Aldegrever, The Rich Man on His Deathbed (1554) 

The Four Temperaments

Adriaen Collaert, The Four Temperaments (1583) 

The Four Elements

Adriaen Collaert, The Four Elements (c. 1584) 

Netherlandish Proverbs 17

"What can smoke do to iron?" 

There is no point in trying to change the unchangeable. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.2

I can scarcely force myself to wish that others shall think this cart mine. My false embarrassment about the truth still holds out, you see; and whenever we meet a more sumptuous party 
 
I blush in spite of myself—proof that this conduct which I approve and applaud has not yet gained a firm and steadfast dwelling-place within me. He who blushes at riding in a rattletrap will boast when he rides in style.
 
So my progress is still insufficient. I have not yet the courage openly to acknowledge my thriftiness. Even yet I am bothered by what other travelers think of me. 
 
But instead of this, I should really have uttered an opinion counter to that in which mankind believe, saying, “You are mad, you are misled, your admiration devotes itself to superfluous things! You estimate no man at his real worth. When property is concerned, you reckon up in this way with most scrupulous calculation those to whom you shall lend either money or benefits; for by now you enter benefits also as payments in your ledger.
 
“You say: ‘His estates are wide, but his debts are large.’ ‘He has a fine house, but he has built it on borrowed capital.’ ‘No man will display a more brilliant retinue on short notice, but he cannot meet his debts.’ If he pays off his creditors, he will have nothing left.’” 
 
So you will feel bound to do in all other cases as well—to find out by elimination the amount of every man’s actual possessions. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
Nevertheless, though I can begin to grasp these noble principles, there is still something holding me back: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Like Seneca, I find myself ashamed of my frugality, worried that others will take me to be a failure in life, and I will catch myself peeking with envy at my neighbor’s new car. 
 
Clearly, my doubts reveal how my understanding is not yet complete, for if I actually knew what was good for me, I would hardly hesitate to pursue it. What is contributing to the uncertainty? 
 
When I examine my own struggle, I realize that I remain dazzled by certain impressions: from the inside, my old habits continue to weigh me down, and from the outside, I am still afraid to abandon a herd mentality. When I lower my guard, even for a moment, I am inclined to let my passions run away with me. 
 
If Seneca, a far better man than I can ever claim to be, was also second-guessing himself, I should not think too poorly of my misgivings. I fear the only cure for such a frailty is steady practice: routines are formed through repetition, and self-reliance is not crafted overnight. Upon falling down, the victory is always in standing right back up. 
 
In most cases, I have now reached a point where taking a short break will do me a world of good. Even a minute of calm reflection, which can feel like an eternity when the fire burns hot, allows me to restore my sanity. The next time you catch me being resentful, jealous, or quarrelsome, you can safely assume that I neglected to hit the pause button.
 
To convince myself of a truth is not to force a conclusion down my throat, but rather to carefully evaluate if the reasoning is sound. Is a desire gnawing away at me? Then I can remember that I am a creature of reason and will, and so my judgment is made to rule my appetites. Am I intimidated by the opinions of others? Then I can consider what they have to say, without allowing them to do my thinking for me. My nature calls for the virtues, not for chasing after pleasures or currying favor. 
 
As Seneca says, what does the grasping man really possess? He is forever scheming, calculating how other people might bring a profit or a loss, to the point where his quest to acquire and to consume only sees balance sheets instead of human faces. By denying the very dignity of what it even means to be a person, he has drained himself of any genuine merit. 
 
And in the process of plotting against his fellows, what does he discover about the rules of the game? It turns out that even the richest man is at the mercy of his creditors, because the mercenaries never give anything away for free. Sometimes the price to pay is much too high—by aiming to rule over their circumstances, it turns out that the circumstances now rule over them. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

The Elements

"The Elements" 

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) 

Man is permitted much 
To scan and learn 
In Nature’s frame; 
Till he well-nigh can tame 
Brute mischiefs, and can touch 
Invisible things, and turn 
All warring ills to purposes of good. 
Thus, as a god below, 
He can control, 
And harmonize, what seems amiss to flow 
As sever’d from the whole 
And dimly understood. 

But o’er the elements 
One Hand alone, 
One Hand has sway.
What influence day by day 
In straiter belt prevents 
The impious Ocean, thrown 
Alternate o’er the ever-sounding shore? 
Or who has eye to trace 
How the Plague came? 
Forerun the doublings of the Tempest’s race? 
Or the Air’s weight and flame 
On a set scale explore? 

Thus God has will’d
That man, when fully skill’d, 
Still gropes in twilight dim; 
Encompass’d all his hours 
By fearfullest powers 
Inflexible to him. 
That so he may discern 
His feebleness, 
And e’en for earth’s success 
To Him in wisdom turn, 
Who holds for us the keys of either home,
Earth and the world to come. 

IMAGE: Hendrik van Balen, The Four Elements (c. 1620) 

No Life Vain

"No Life Vain" 

Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849) 

Let me not deem that I was made in vain, 
Or that my being was an accident, 
Which fate, in working its sublime intent, 
Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign. 
Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain 
Hath its own mission, and is duly sent 
To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent 
'Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main. 
The very shadow of an insect's wing, 
For which the violet cared not while it stayed, 
Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing, 
Proved that the sun was shining by its shade: 
Then can a drop of the eternal spring, 
Shadow of living lights, in vain be made? 

IMAGE by Keith Dotson 

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Four Seasons

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Four Seasons (1621) 

Abel Grimmer, The Four Seasons

Abel Grimmer, The Four Seasons (c. 1607) 

Pieter van der Heyden, The Four Seasons

Pieter van der Heyden, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hans Bol, The Four Seasons (1570) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Months

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Months of the Year (1565) 

The Hunters in the Snow (December/January) 

The Gloomy Day (February/March) 

April and May are lost

Haymaking (June/July)

The Harvesters (August/September) 

The Return of the Herd (October/November)