Anamnesis

I visited the Collegian website tonight. Apparently, my alma mater is offering a course in Arabic. It's an honors class (1 credit) where people learn about the culture and learn the alphabet. Very interesting.

I went on to read the op-ed page of this little paper which seemed once so big in Mecca, now so far away. There is juvenile energy here. It strikes me as, well, strange, other, and desirable. I wonder now what some people--people I really respect--really thought of my pseudo-Socratic columns in 1999. In memory, they are fond. In fact, they may have been much worse. Jacob tried to tell me so.

Perhaps there is food for thought in this. Perhaps not. Can I yet do no more than to reminisce about the souls that I have met, the profs taken, and even books read some years ago? Am I more than the sum of all that I have bought, meaning to read? Or of the logoi begun and yet not followed?

You know, it is possible that Hillsdale ruined me.

Who are you?

You know, I used to really dig Babylon 5. I knew every line. Jonathan and I used to quote them to each other to describe everything and everyone. Rachel was Delenn. The elf-woman from outer space.

What happened?

The real world?

Perhaps. Even the wisest cannot say.

Some of my friends may remember how I once wrote a graphic short story in which I laid rather bare my "girl problems." I meant to follow it up with a story about the "God problems." I started many times, but it was too much work. Too much responsibility. For what is dearer than the soul? I tried to talk to my parents about God and love and philosophy. I tried to explain to them that I needed to pursue the logos to the bitter end, even if that end was Lucretius, Chaos, and ancient Night. I tried to reason with them, and to apologize for absolutes. I tried to make them see that if they loved me, they would understand that I could not shrink from tearing the curtain, even if discomforting to them. Do you love me, Peter? You know that I love you, but am I just one of the sheep?

It seems important that I revisit such restless thoughts with you, my friends, from time to time. For who would lose, though full of pain . . . Yes, there is certainly a danger of self-pity, but cannot self-pity be something quite other than the apprehension that mentem mortalia tagunt, that every man hangs by the cross of himself, that sapience increases dolor?