This week was war themed. Kippur, Passchendaele, Spinal Tap (revisited, and it was funnier than recalled, but it too is war, though more internalized, both obvious and subtle portraying many layers, alluring for the seekers; therefore does Nigel state, ‘none, none more black.’

Maybe, if we come around again, they’ll explain why films manage love stories while portraying industrial destruction. 

We’ve just watched Kippur.

Did the director’s character really say ‘you should read, Marcuse’s: One Dimensional Man?

He did.

What of Festinger, his cognitive dissonance. Those relics of heady college years when we knew so much in our reckless confidence, and tore lives apart like a dark star feasting on binary satellites. How many times did we crack bindings, hungry for epiphany and never letting down the oppressed, opined heartily! How well we hid the lack of trying, the lack of trial and testing, the dearth of discoveries, under bigoted rage.

We stabilized with Levinas while Derridas tapped out morse code rap, entertaining enough and we were happily thinking that we thought; a lot too, about important matters. Everyone a shy recluse never implying what had seemed obvious. Kierkegaard, you’re so handsome, I just want to talk more about your trembling and pet rodent, please, come with me, I can hear you better in my bedroom, away from these other people. Later E.B. White satisfied. Right, right! We had been there together, you in socks, and invented scoffing. Didn’t she say you could draw pearls from any oyster?

Arrives Eric Hoffer.

True Believers.

The fear bit, especially of misfit-ness surely, but who knows? You could be me tomorrow.

Maybe freedom and power aren’t totally opposites, maybe they do belong in the same conversation. If you’ve had either…

Politics makes power productive.

Neither has anything to do with freedom, but in the context of a love story even war enraptures. Is this what is meant by ‘not to trust oneself until the day of death?’

– Pirke Avos 2:5: Hillel says: Do not separate yourself from the congregation. Do not believe in yourself until the day of your death. Do not judge your fellow until you come to his place. Do not say something that cannot be heard, for in the end it will be heard. Do not say, “When I will be available I will study [Torah],” lest you never become available.