Post by ronprice on Jul 20, 2010 21:47:49 GMT -5
There are many internet sites now where one can have literally 100s, if not, 1000s of friends. I've always been of the view, at least since I was in my childhood, that all men and women were my brothers and sisters, that the world was, indeed, one country and humankind its citizens. But one can interact with only so many and the degrees of intimacy vary from person to person. So it has been that I often do what I call "some housecleaning" at various internet sites and keep on board and as "friends" only those to whom I have written to directly and who write to me. All others I have deleted; I have also added the comment that, "if anyone whom I have deleted wants to remain my friend, they need only ask." In this way: (a) I do not keep on my list of 'friends' at any one site literally dozens of people I do not even know; (b) I do not offend anyone whose name I have deleted from my list of 'friends' and (c) I have a realistic working list of people who write to me and I to them.
For those who would like to explore a context for friendship in some meaningful way, I encourage their reading an essay on the subject by a man who is arguably the first significant essayist in the western intellectual tradition. His name is Michel Montaigne(1533-1592) and you can find his essay on friendship at: Literary and Philosophical Essays.The Harvard Classics, 1909–1914. This is easily googled. Of course, there is a great deal written on the subject of friendship and I would doubt that many will be interested in contemporary or historical examinations of its significance, its meaning and reality. Still, I encourage a reading of Montaigne's essay on the subject.
There is some inner judge to which we must submit and, whether we manifest this inner submission in diary or in poetry or in some other form, it matters not. "Nor is there anything sweeter than the chime" writes Montaigne, "of his approval." Here, Montaigne is placing an emphasis on the approval of what you might call our higher selves.
Montaigne wanted to conceal nothing or pretend nothing about himself. This is obvious in reading his very confessional essays. I find, in life as in writing, I can only say certain things and my confessionalism is of a moderate variety when it does exist in daily life and in my writing. This is true no matter who it is I am talking or writing to. The guidance of the Baha'i writings on this subject is quite extensive and individuals who are Baha'is can draw on this guidance as they go through the decades of their life-narrative and its slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Among the many useful guidelines in the Baha'i writings is the following: "We are forbidden to confess to any person," although we may "spontaneously acknowledge that we have been in the wrong." I have found this a useful operating principle of living--and writing. It has helped me rein-in my confessional tendencies since as far back as the 1940s.
I am not interested in commenting on my faeces as Montaigne was in his Essays or expatiating, as so many autobiographers and biographers do, on the various and several activities of my penis or the vaginas of women in explicit sexual references over the last half century of my experience. After I discovered in 1965, at the age of 21,(for I was by modern standards a late-developer) that these organs were a source of an immensely stimulating pleasure in addition to their normal anatomical functioning, a new world opened up, so to speak. Unlike Montaigne I do some concealing in this domain.
Like Dylan Thomas, I reveal some of this secret domain, although I can't compete with Thomas' twenty year orgy of drunkenness and lechery and his particular eccentricities like the occasion when he got his penis stuck in a two-ounce honey pot. But, then, I don't think I'm quite the complex and disagreeable figure that Thomas seemed to be and which Andrew Lycett's new biography describes. Over a lifetime there are so many unusual, strange and unique events that occur to other parts of the anatomy as well, giving the genitals a bit of a run for their money. I can't see any particular virtue in angling erotic details into my story as a means of either entertainment or a way of illuminating the decades of my life. In my journal or diary, this is another matter. Here I am highly confessional but, then, I do not anticipate its publication until after my passing---even then I leave that to my literary executors.
The hazardous enterprise of living takes place on a day-to-day basis that is so much of the time not experienced as hazardous at all at least for those of us in the West, like myself, who come from the middle classes. This is, of course, not always true for their are times in life when every day seems hazardous. My aim, among the many aims I have in daily life now--in the early years of the evening of my life--is to achieve that "miraculous adjustment" of all my wayward parts, the wayward parts of my body, mind and soul. I live them openly before my eyes, and to some extent here before your eyes, dear reader. I only give you part of myself in friendship and I expect no more from you.
Again, I encourage your reading of this fine essay by Montaigne, an essay now more than 400 years old.-Ron Price, Tasmania
For those who would like to explore a context for friendship in some meaningful way, I encourage their reading an essay on the subject by a man who is arguably the first significant essayist in the western intellectual tradition. His name is Michel Montaigne(1533-1592) and you can find his essay on friendship at: Literary and Philosophical Essays.The Harvard Classics, 1909–1914. This is easily googled. Of course, there is a great deal written on the subject of friendship and I would doubt that many will be interested in contemporary or historical examinations of its significance, its meaning and reality. Still, I encourage a reading of Montaigne's essay on the subject.
There is some inner judge to which we must submit and, whether we manifest this inner submission in diary or in poetry or in some other form, it matters not. "Nor is there anything sweeter than the chime" writes Montaigne, "of his approval." Here, Montaigne is placing an emphasis on the approval of what you might call our higher selves.
Montaigne wanted to conceal nothing or pretend nothing about himself. This is obvious in reading his very confessional essays. I find, in life as in writing, I can only say certain things and my confessionalism is of a moderate variety when it does exist in daily life and in my writing. This is true no matter who it is I am talking or writing to. The guidance of the Baha'i writings on this subject is quite extensive and individuals who are Baha'is can draw on this guidance as they go through the decades of their life-narrative and its slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Among the many useful guidelines in the Baha'i writings is the following: "We are forbidden to confess to any person," although we may "spontaneously acknowledge that we have been in the wrong." I have found this a useful operating principle of living--and writing. It has helped me rein-in my confessional tendencies since as far back as the 1940s.
I am not interested in commenting on my faeces as Montaigne was in his Essays or expatiating, as so many autobiographers and biographers do, on the various and several activities of my penis or the vaginas of women in explicit sexual references over the last half century of my experience. After I discovered in 1965, at the age of 21,(for I was by modern standards a late-developer) that these organs were a source of an immensely stimulating pleasure in addition to their normal anatomical functioning, a new world opened up, so to speak. Unlike Montaigne I do some concealing in this domain.
Like Dylan Thomas, I reveal some of this secret domain, although I can't compete with Thomas' twenty year orgy of drunkenness and lechery and his particular eccentricities like the occasion when he got his penis stuck in a two-ounce honey pot. But, then, I don't think I'm quite the complex and disagreeable figure that Thomas seemed to be and which Andrew Lycett's new biography describes. Over a lifetime there are so many unusual, strange and unique events that occur to other parts of the anatomy as well, giving the genitals a bit of a run for their money. I can't see any particular virtue in angling erotic details into my story as a means of either entertainment or a way of illuminating the decades of my life. In my journal or diary, this is another matter. Here I am highly confessional but, then, I do not anticipate its publication until after my passing---even then I leave that to my literary executors.
The hazardous enterprise of living takes place on a day-to-day basis that is so much of the time not experienced as hazardous at all at least for those of us in the West, like myself, who come from the middle classes. This is, of course, not always true for their are times in life when every day seems hazardous. My aim, among the many aims I have in daily life now--in the early years of the evening of my life--is to achieve that "miraculous adjustment" of all my wayward parts, the wayward parts of my body, mind and soul. I live them openly before my eyes, and to some extent here before your eyes, dear reader. I only give you part of myself in friendship and I expect no more from you.
Again, I encourage your reading of this fine essay by Montaigne, an essay now more than 400 years old.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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