The Ropewalk: The Drummond Diaries

The Ropewalk: The Drummond Diaries: The Drummond Diaries, Oct. '72: The birth/death inflection point: The time of the most deaths is also the time of the greatest number of bir...

The Drummond Diaries

The Drummond Diaries, Oct. '72: The birth/death inflection point: The time of the most deaths is also the time of the greatest number of births - that pre-dawn, breath-holding, semi-purple not-yet of the new day. It occurs with an almost conscious regularity, as if both the unborn infant and the dying aged sensed the same message as different sides of the same impulse: we are between the new and the old, so now is the time. We have reached that neither-nor point between the two, and while one wails with the shock of being born, the other sighs in resignation and final release. But I suspect that both sense it as a dream in passing and wonder what lies ahead. 

One can't help but wonder what it is about us mortals that we so vehemently begrudge God his/her immortality.

The Ropewalk: Silver's Reviews

The Ropewalk: Silver's Reviews: My thanks to Elizabeth for citing "The Ropewalk" as one of her favorite books of 2012. http://silversolara.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favor...

The Ropewalk: Writer's Digest Review of "The Ropewalk"

The Ropewalk: Writer's Digest Review of "The Ropewalk": This is an ambitious and inspiring book, written by a philosopher-poet. The writer is clearly interested in the line between rational an...

Silver's Reviews

My thanks to Elizabeth for citing "The Ropewalk" as one of her favorite books of 2012.

http://silversolara.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-favorite-books-of-2012.html

The End of Indian Summer

The Drummond Diaries 10/23/72 How crisp the air is at this time of year. The day was cool and golden with the last leaves of the year scurrying across the road like errant autumn nut gatherers. Everything is laying in and lying fallow for the upcoming winter.

Odd that the willows hold out for as long as they do.

But the walk after school was a  refreshing feast for the senses. Great splashes of gold on withered gray limbs, stone walls snaking away into the forest. A wisp of the familiar on the air. And my soul somehow still very far away.

Cosmic Exceptions

The Drummond Diaires, 10/9/72 - The way some people carry on about their "specialness," one would think that some sort of cosmic cherry-picking device is at work in the loftier social realms, rather than the simple coin-toss of luck, circumstance, and means. If one life can be judged a "mistake," then without the cherry-picker, all lives can be so judged. But there are no cosmic exceptions, except where, once again, fate and means make that claim possible. But if one life is deemed valuable, then all possess the same potential value. If one life is "entitled" to reach out for the dangling threads of the happiness rushing past him, then all are so entitled. If one life sees he must take the course that falls to him to the exclusion of all else, then maybe all lives have to do the same thing.

On the most elemental level of reasoning, it becomes an inescapable conclusion that all must do the same thing. That some win and some lose is once again simply a manifestation of the die roll of luck, circumstance, and means. Every week someone wins the lottery; that makes him lucky, not special. Every other conclusion is a fabrication concocted by the cherry-picker.