Ἐνεργεία, or Being-At-Work

Life is thoroughly confusing. There is so much to do, and yet breaks must be taken. Relaxation is necessary for activity. Aristotle knew.

I'm incredibly busy. Between being embroiled with Sweeney Todd (un-italicized so as to preserve the ambiguity of discussing either the show or the character), writing a paper on Nicomachean Ethics, doing the normal load of St. John's homework, and working part-time at the art gallery, I haven't exactly had much time for leisure. No worries, though, as it will all be over soon.

Stress is directly linked to health (as I learned last year), and I have been improving on that front. I may have a lot on my plate, but it's still not worth it to be worrying about things when I am not or can't work on them. I have avoided becoming ill this entire semester, which in my current situation is a feat (no jinxes, please).

Working through Aristotle, Plato, Lucretius, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Homer, and other authors of their ilk is really giving me perspective on the levels of achievement possible. Not only did all these guys think for a good long while about stuff, but they are still conveying those ideas to us in an interesting and engaging way thousands of years later. Not only their original words, but the translators we are reading are taking the ideas and literally re-forming them into a new language we can understand. Joe Sachs may be my new hero. The power and immortality of the written word occupies my thoughts more and more often.

On a less philosophical level, I am wondering about my choice to stay here in Santa Fe this summer. I'll be working full-time, which means income (which hopefully means a digital SLR in my future), but I won't be at home. It's all just life, and the only thing constant is change, so I can't fight it. They say home is where you hang your hat, or where your heart is, or something like that, but it doesn't feel like I can so easily change my definition. I have my better-than-ideal home situation, my family, and at least a part of me will always consider that home. Nonetheless, I must first take a step forward to be able to really decide if I want to stay put. I'll go on the Oregon Trail, see the Pacific, and then decide if I want to return to the East. Hopefully I won't die of dysentery on the way.

I am making good friends here, but more importantly, I am becoming self-sufficient. Like James Redfield says in The Celestine Prophecy, people are always looking for the other half to complete their circle, but they don't realize that they must first complete their own circle, and then they can join it with another full circle. Though, looking back on that book, it has much less weight than it did when I first read it, if any, so I'll take whatever it says with a big grain of salt. Like the kind a horse licks. A horse-lick of salt, you could say. A salty horse-lick. A licky horse-salt. Yes.

Free and wanton and enigmatic and perverse and infatuated and scared and confused and ecstatic and fulfilled and desirous and prepossessed.

Nothing like nice series of adjectives to sum up an evening.

On The Nature Of Things

Apply your mind now, hear the truth of reason!
A new fact fights to clear its way, to accost you
And show you a new aspect of the world.
Nothing's so very easy to believe
Which at first does not seem incredible;
So too nothing's so great or wondrous, whose
Wonder will not diminish, little by little.
The purity and brilliance of the sky–
Observe it first, and all that it encloses,
The planets that veer, the moon, the splendor of sunlight–
If all these, out of the blue, now hurled themselves
For the first time before our human sight,
What could be called more wonderful than they?
What would we less have dared to prophesy?
Nothing. We'd have beheld this sky with awe.
Now no one even deigns to lift his eyes
To the light-filled temples of heaven, so stuffed, so weary
We are with its sight. Leave, then, this terror of mere
Novelty, cease to spit up the truth, but rather
Weigh with a keener judgment; if it seems true,
Surrender; if false, strap on your armor against it.
For the mind seeks to know: if boundless space
Stretches beyond the battlements of the world,
What lies at last where thought desires to glimpse,
Where the hurl of the mind soars far at liberty?

On The Nature Of Things, II.1025-1045 – Lucretius, Esolen translation