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My dear fellow,' burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of montezuma? lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. we are dying men, ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!
-John Barth
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My Dear Fellow,' Burlingame Said, 'we Sit

John Barth
My dear fellow,' burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of montezuma? lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. we are dying men, ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!
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Past Men Thinking

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The reality of living by faith as though we were already dead, of living by faith in open communion with god, and then stepping back into the external world as though we are already raised from the dead, this is not once for all, it is a matter of moment-by-moment faith, and living moment by moment. this morning's faith will never do for this noon. the faith of this noon will never do for suppertime . the faith of suppertime will never do for the next morning. thank god for the reality for which we were created, a moment-by-moment communication with god himself.
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But as van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different turns, but used different levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch of a viaduct along which a motor skims by), he found himself tackling, in still vague and idle fashion, the science that was to obsess his mature years - problems of space and time, space versus time, time-twisted space, space as time, time as space - and space breaking away from time, in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: i am because i die.
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I like "rock, paper, scissors two-thirds." you know. "rock breaks scissors." "these scissors are bent. they're destroyed. i can't cut stuff. so i lose." "scissors cuts paper." "these are strips. this is not even paper. it's gonna take me forever to put this back together." "paper covers rock." "rock is fine. no structural damage to rock. rock can break through paper at any point. just say the word. paper sucks." there should be "rock, dynamite with a cutable wick, scissors."
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The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. the tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. never trust the artist. trust the tale. the proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
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Night is done, gone the moon, gone the stars from the skies. fades the black of night comes the morn with rosy light. fold your wings, go to sleep, rest your gizzards, safe you'll be for the day. glaux is nigh. far away is first black, but it shall seep back over field over flower in the twilight hour. we are home in our tree. we are owls, we are free. as we go, this we know glaux is nigh.
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Faith and daily life, faith and work-these are not separate things. they are one and the same. to think of them as separate-that faith is faith, and work is work-is theoretical faith. based on the recognition that work and faith are one and the same, we should put one hundred percent of our energy into our jobs and one hundred percent into our faith, too. when we resolve to do this, we enter the path of victory in life. faith means to show irrefutable proof of victory amid the realities of society and in our own daily lives.
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