Probate and Divorce

The two sisters were inheriting the mansion. The mansion had servants, cool dogs, huge TVs, fluffy beds, a bowling alley, a huge garden, a wet bar, and lots of other things like that. The mansion smelled good and was in a good neighborhood.

The two sisters disputed the mansion. Only one of them could own it and they refused to split it up. They fought over it in probate court, and every two to four years appealed to a higher court. And the court would change the decision. How sweet it was to be the one sister taking possession of the mansion, after two to four years living in some dingy apartment.

--

The husband and wife got a divorce. They fought in court over custody of the kids. They appealed the divorce court, and every so often the court reversed its decision. No matter who had the kids, the other one had to pay child support.

National Adolescence

It used to be that everyone was children and parents. Then, one year, a precocious child got rid of his parents and entered adolescence. His capabilities grew and he was happy and free. The other parents (and many of the children) were horrified at his freedom. There are ways in which parents (and children) are more mature than adolescents. But because the bodies of the children craved to be adolescent, one by one they rejected their parents and were free, despite the attempts of some of the parents to control them to prevent the change.

It used to be that within the children there was the good child, who obeyed his parents, and the bad child, who disobeyed. But within the adolescents, all parts are equal, and all parts are valued. And between the different adolescents, all are equal, although some are much stronger than others. They create a brotherhood and sisterhood of adolescents, enjoying hanging out, taking drugs, having sex, doing graffiti, and playing loud music.

The parents and children live for all kinds of reasons, but the adolescents live, and always have lived, for pleasing themselves.

The adolescents increasingly hope, and the parents and children increasingly fear, that adolescence will conquer the world. That it's the final state of human development, and there will be no further maturing beyond that point.

Dialogue of Peace

In the marketplace:

BUYER: I hear such a clamor in the marketplace. One person wants me to buy fish, and another to buy fruit. Which should I buy?

VENDOR: You should buy whatever it is that will bring you life.

BUYER: You are not offering up your produce to me.

VENDOR: Alas, I know that turnips are only for those who know them.

BUYER: But if you won't talk me into buying turnips, what shall I buy? Fish? Or fruit? Or whatever else?

VENDOR: Often enough, I am in your position. Every vendor is a buyer sometimes.

BUYER: What do you do?

VENDOR: Truthfully, I think that we don't know what food really brings life.

BUYER: So what do you do?

VENDOR: I'm waiting for someone to come into the marketplace and say what really does bring life.

BUYER: But how will you hear that person over all the noise?

VENDOR: I will try to make everyone be quiet.

BUYER: But why should they be quiet? Don't they know that fruit or fish bring the most life?

VENDOR: You're right...

BUYER: Vendor, please sell me some turnips.

VENDOR: Life and truth are not found in them.

BUYER: You said it: life and truth are found in them.

BOTH: We both know they aren't the answer.

The Self-care System

Written in January of 2019, minor edits in 2021.

He walked along, lost in his thoughts, when a gang of five young men surrounded him.

"Are you a self-carer?" they asked.

"No," the man said.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to put myself first."

"Why's that? You think you're too good for us?" They stepped in closer.

"No", he said, by a force of will over his body shutting down.

"Believes in himself, doesn't he?" "Or God." "Same difference." "Well, we'll give him a reason for self-care."

They beat the man to the ground, kicking him and pummelling him, punching him in the kidneys over and over. They knew he was still alive, and then left him there.

No one came to rescue the man. He lay there, and thought, "Well, I guess I should go to the hospital".

The hospital, like all the hospitals, was run by the Self-carers. They welcomed him in. "I'm glad you took the step to come to us, out of love for yourself." He was confused as to whether he loved himself, although that might have been from the loss of blood. They sat him down in the triage line, knowing that he would live on, and gave him some paperwork to fill out.

When he got done with it, they came over to officiate the Oath.

"I do solemnly declare" he began, repeating after them, "That I always have and henceforward always will put my well-being first, and following from that, the well-being of my collective. And that God does not exist, otherwise he would have saved me, and that I renounce God and never did and never will serve him or love him all my life. So help me."

"We will help you", the doctors said. "Now come with us to the exam room." They diagnosed him with traumas, most notably serious kidney damage.

"We're going to have to replace at least one of your kidneys. Fortunately we have a fresh boatload in from where we get them from."

"Where do you get them from?"

"Oh, from a faraway country where it's more economical to raise them."

"Okay, I guess that's what I'll have to go with", said the man.

"Great, you're going to do great", the doctors said.

They did the operation, and everything went well for the man. He got integrated into the self-care life, his confusion covered up with things making sense.

But one day he had a relapse, out on the edge of town. He started yearning. Not long it was before a man saw him yearning, read it from his body language, and started talking to him to get him to come close and be bound to him. Then the waiting man stabbed him in the chest and took his wallet.

While the man lay there, bleeding, he thought "I'd better go to the hospital again. I'm sure glad I put my well-being first." And he began to rouse himself.

But his yearning paralyzed him, fought with him. He tried his best to overcome his own heart, but his heart was too strong to let him walk steadily toward the hospital. He would have died.

But then a stranger approached. He had his own medical supplies and cared for the man's wound. The man wanted to thank him and be his friend, but the stranger looked around and said, "No, I can't let you do that. Community's watching. They want to suck me into them, and if I form a community with you, Community wins. I'm sorry, I have to go." "Wait, let me tell you about Self-care." So the helper stayed and heard.

"No, I still have to go. But you can unswear your oath to the Self-care people."

So he did, repeating after the helper. "My well-being is accidental to me, not essential. God is truer than life."

The Statue Guide

There is a statue which was not made by a human being, which stands in the heart of a certain city. It is 500 feet (~166 m) high and can be seen from miles away.

A young boy saw that statue and saw the life in it. He wanted to go see it, and his parents took him once. He looked up at it from its feet and it didn't look quite the same to him. But he believed in it, and touched the statue's feet, polished by the touch of other citizens.

From then on, he knew that the statue was for him, and he went about his normal days as a young boy, not thinking too much of it.

He read the newspaper when he had nothing to do after school, and saw that there were blind people who had trouble finding the statue. People tried to give them very good directions, but it turns out that it's hard to give directions to blind people if you're sighted.

This weighed on him. He decided that he needed to learn how to make better directions for blind people to find the statue.

He forgot about this in the short run, but remembered it with his whole life. He found that while a sighted person only needed to be shown the statue from a distance, and told "just find a way to get through the streets -- you'll make it", a blind person had to be told to go from this street to that street -- the city has a lot of canyons cutting streets into pieces, so there's no one or two streets that can get you to the statue. And unfortunately, in this city there are blind people who can't even process the idea of a street and must be told precisely how many steps to take in which direction, orienting themselves to the sounds and smells along the way.

So he knew that what he must do was to become blind himself, and even damage his ability to process streets, in order to enter into the reality of the blind people he wanted to guide to the statue. So he let his eyesight dim, from reading old street maps, and learned to read Braille.

And he worked diligently, as a guide for the blind, proving from Braille maps exactly where the statue ought to be.

He had always been content, as when a boy, to let the statue be off in the distance, but one day he wished to see the statue, to believe in it. So he looked up the route to get from right where he was to the statue, and carefully followed it, avoided getting hit by a car, avoided tripping on the cracks in the pavement.

And he arrived at where the statue ought to be, but he could not see it. Eventually someone led him to the foot of it, and he touched the foot. He could only believe that the rest of the statue was there.

Father and Daughter

She grew up in her father's house. Her father had a corporation and she went to parties. She was beautiful and desirable.

One day, she asked her father for her inheritance. He said, "OK, but you only get half of what you ordinarily would have." She thought, fair's fair.

She went out into the world and associated with all kinds of people. She gave parties and sent her family photos.

But at some point, she fell in with a band of Christians. Soon, she was baptized, and gave all her money away, following Jesus.

But that life didn't suit her. She started to think it was only a phase. "Maybe I could get a job in my father's corporation," she thought. So she put on a long-sleeved T-shirt to cover her cross tattoo and took the bus, another, another bus back to her father's door.

He answered the door and said, "I'm not your father. God's your father." And he shut the door in her face.

Father and Son

He grew up with no father, only the address of where his father lived, and he was always trying to find a father. He knew that it would be unreasonable to expect his father to care for him, since he had abandoned him at birth and moved very far away. But he always hoped to find a father, and then forgot that hope and found himself offering himself up as a son to father-figure after father-figure, abusive men and men with no use for him.

Finally, with his mind and body broken, he thought, "Maybe I should go see my birth father." So he got to the door and his birth father let him in and they talked. And he wanted to stay the night, but his father said, "I'm not your father, son. You have to go. God is your father."

Precipitation

The silver cation is a unique ion, different from all other silver ions. It slides chaotically in the water, electrostatically unfulfilled. It entered the solution with a nitrate anion, which is similarly lost.

But after a time, the silver cation found a bromide anion, which resolved its tension. They fall out of solution.

Things are ideal: There is a silver cation for every bromide anion. Things work out for all the silver ions and all the bromide ions: there are none left in solution.

Realistic Sword-fighting

Sometimes as part of a drama on a stage, you want there to be sword-fighting. A more realistic drama (a drama with more reality), requires a metal sword. You can blunt the edge to some extent, but you can still do a lot of damage with it. Or you can use a wooden or plastic sword, if it's not as important to be realistic.

Loyalty to a Woman

From Blanquerna by Ramon Llull:

Once upon a time a man loved a woman and said to her that he loved her more than any woman beside, and the woman enquired of him wherefore he loved her more than any other woman, and he replied that it was because she was fairer than any.

The woman made sign with her hand in a certain direction, saying that in that direction there was a woman that was fairer; and when the man turned and looked in that direction the woman said that if there were another woman that was fairer, he would love her more, and this signified that his love to her was not perfect.

The Moth and the Star / The Owl Who Was God

Here is a link to the James Thurber story "The Moth and the Star". It's a story about seeking the unseekable, impractical, almost-non-existent and how that makes you a fool and keeps your body beautiful. The link also includes Thurber's "The Owl Who Was God", which is like a mirror version of "The Moth and the Star".

Apparently, someone set "The Moth and the Star" to music.

I could connect "The Moth and the Star" to gravity and grace. Star-seeking (what the one moth does) is sort of like seeking grace. The bridge lamps (what the other moths seek) are like gravity.

We devour people and crave power in this world, because that's reality. But realisticness isn't always trustworthy.

I don't know if Thurber intended this, but one could contrast the moth, who flies to something impersonal and more or less infinitely far away, with the birds in "The Owl Who Was God", who follow the owl, something personal and tangible and present. Moth contrasted with birds, star contrasted with owl.