5.quotes, freedom and love

7/30/2019 5.Quotes, Freedom and Love

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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"No one is more truly helpless, more completely a victim, than he who can neither

choose nor change nor escape his protectors." John Holt "Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Morality is herd instinct in the individualand it is the best of all devices for leading

mankind by the nose." Friedrich Nietzsche

The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people

dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the

school. Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are themeans employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored. Friedrich Nietzsche

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the

tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is

too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche

Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.

Richard Whately

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds,

while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Charles Mackay

As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, the shepherds of men, i.e.,

their rulers, are of a nature superior to that of the peoples under them. Jean-Jacques

RousseauEach of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction

of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an

indivisible part of the whole.In order then that the social compact may not be anempty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the

rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the

whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is

the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all

personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the political machine; this

alone legitimizes civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical,

and liable to the most frightful abuses. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of

the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. . . John Dewey,

Pedagogic Creed, 1897
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"We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all

parents as having given hostages to our cause." Horace Mann

Culture possesses authority, but not necessarily truth. Weston La Barre

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders . John

Taylor Gatto

QUOTES ON LIBERTY & LOVE

QUOTES ON LIBERTY (numbered so you can refer to them)

1. "Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how tobe free is not given equally to all men and all nations." Paul Valry

2. "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to beexactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that whichpleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch,an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation." John Stuart Mill

3. "Socialism means equality of income or nothing...under socialism youwould not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged,taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that youhad not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly beexecuted in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would

have to live well." George Bernard Shaw

4. "Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his handsand at whom it is aimed." Josef Stalin

5. "We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to lookupon all parents as having given hostages to our cause." Horace Mann

6. "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown willnever be uprooted." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

7. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfectway the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way." JohnD. Rockefeller, Sr.

8. "To be nobody but yourself -- in a world which is doing it's best, night andday, to make you like everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle

which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." e. e. cummings
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9. The following quotes are from Edmund Burke

The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite beplaced somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be

without. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measurethe laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then.Manners are what vex or sooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize orrefine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of theair we breathe in. End of quote

10. "A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerfulexecutive of political bosses and their army of managers control a populationof slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, toministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.... Thegreatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doingsomething, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from apractical point of view, is silence about truth." Aldous Huxley

11. "In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. Whenthe Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give tothem, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility,then Athens ceased to be free." Edward Gibbon

12. "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."Aesop

13. "When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion -when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission frommen who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those whodeal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graftand by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, butprotect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded andhonesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society isdoomed. Ayn Rand

14. "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from beingoverwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it,you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high topay for the privilege of owning yourself." Rudyard Kipling

15. "Resentment-morality proclaims, 'Blessed are those who have made amess of their lives.' But any society that truly believes that it is blessed to fail


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will not long prevail on this earth." Resentment Against Achievement, RobertSheaffer

16. "Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in

slavery than unequal in freedom." Alexis de Tocqueville

17. "The First Amendment says nothing about a right not to be offended. Therisk of finding someone else's speech offensive is the price each of us paysfor our own free speech. Free people don't run to court -- or to the principal --when they encounter a message they don't like. They answer it with one oftheir own." Jeff Jacoby

18. I too believe that humanity will win in the long run. I am only afraid that at

the same time the world will have turned into one huge hospital whereeveryone is everybody elses humane nurse. None are more hopelesslyenslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Johann Wolfgang vonGoethe

19. "Modern man is far from slaying the beast within; why assume that theman of the future will be a completely new creature? What if the new mancombines the animal irrationality of primitive man with the calculated greedand powerlust of industrial man, while possessing the virtual Godlike powersgranted by technology? That would be the ultimate horror. From

Technological Man, Victor Ferkiss

20. All of the following are from writings of Eric Hoffer

Outside the Occident, where nature has the upper hand, the dragon is stillsupreme, but the Occident proper is the domain of the devil. We of thepresent are vividly aware that the slaying of the dragon is the opening act in aprotracted, desperate contest with the devil. The triumphs of the scientist andthe technologist are setting the stage for the psychiatrist and policeman. Wealso know that we can cope with the devil only by using the tension betweenthat which is most human and nonhuman in us to stretch souls in creativeeffort.

The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, andeven riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these bydeveloping and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "havenots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. Theycan feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident byspreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making otherspoor.

To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than

freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relieffrom the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable


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failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want toplan, command and shoulder all responsibility.

Our greatest weariness comes from work not done.

The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means

an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a senseof worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. Themajority prove their worth by keeping busy.

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life andhaving no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wastingour life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time foranything elsewe are the busiest people in the world.

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is astranger in his own house.

A man by himself is in bad company.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say.We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in allthe dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and wantdesperately to say it.

Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with thatwhich we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matterof chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of theuntalented.

It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls

make music. It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, andnew forms of expression.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcythe bankruptcy of a soul thatexpends too much in hope and expectation.

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity.The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but alsowith ourselves.

You can never get enough of what you don't really need.

The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, andeven riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these bydeveloping and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "havenots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. Theycan feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident byspreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making otherspoor.

People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry forpower. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says:leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desirefor power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.


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Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is anirksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual?We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the wordsof the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom."

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; tomost it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true thatthose who can grow will feel free under any condition.

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely tobe indifferent to common everyday truths.

We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but toevoke it in us.

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Whereequality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.... Theresentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them butfrom the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickednessbut weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weaknesswherever they see it.

Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice. End of quotes

21. "A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." Bertrandde Jouvenel

22. "The American feels too rich in his opportunities for free expression thathe often no longer knows what he is free from. Neither does he know wherehe is not free; he does not recognize his native autocrats when he seesthem." Erik H. Erikson

23. "A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neitherequality nor freedom." Milton Friedman

24. "Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-controland, therefore,religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being." Lord Acton

25. "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom,but license." John Milton

26. "The more laws, the less justice." Marcus Tullius Cicero


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27. "Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaningpeople who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied tothemselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot ofmankind." Henry Grady Weaver

28. The following are all taken from the writings of Thomas Szasz

The natural state of mankind is poverty; wealth is something man mustcreate. Similarly, the natural state of mankind is mental illness (in the senseof being undisciplined, useless, and infantile); mental health (in the sense ofbeing competent, self-responsible, and caring for ones family) is somethingman must create. It is therefore wrong to think of poverty or mental illness asbeing caused, but it is right to think of wealth or mental health that way: thisis why poverty and mental illness must be overcome by the personal effort ofthe affected individualwhile a person may lose his wealth and mental healthwithout his participation or even against his will.

Legitimacy rationalizes; rationality legitimizes. Legitimacy is weaked bydefiance: that is why it seeks consensus and compliance. Rationality isstrengthened by defiance: that is why it is indifferent to consensus andeschews coercion.

Most people want self-determination for themselves and subjection forothers; some want subjection for everyone; only a few want self-determinationfor everyone.

People are free in proportion as the State protects them from others; andare oppressed in proportion as the State protects them from themselves.

Mysticism joins and unites; reason divides and separates. People cravebelonging more than understanding. Hence the prominent role of mysticism,and the limited role of reason, in human affairs.

A glossary: Bad: obsolete; superseded by insane, mentally ill, sick.Good: obsolete; superseded by sane, mentally healthy, healthy. Ethics:obsolete; superseded by the diagnosis and treat of disease.

The liberal-scientific ethic: if its bad for you, it should be prohibited; if itsgood for you, it should be required.

New models of mental illnesses are now produced faster than new models

of automobiles, perhaps because they sell faster.

We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individualresponsibility. End of quote

29. All of the following is from: The Mature Mind by E.A. Overstreet

The human individual is not self-contained. His physical survival dependsupon constant access to resources outside his body. In like manner, hisgrowth into psychic individuality depends upon his having linked himself inone way or another with his environment.

The life that is psychologically poverty-stricken is on that has few suchlinkagesand these routine and noncreative. The life that is rich and happy is


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one that is fulfilling its possibilities through creative linkages with reality. Amature person is ot one who has come to a certain level of achievement andstopped there. He is rather a maturing personone whose linkages with lifeare constantly becoming stronger and richer because his attitudes are suchas to encourage their growth rather than their stoppage.

When Diderot made his startling remark that all children are essentiallycriminal, he was saying in effect, that human beings are safe to have aroundonly if they are as weak in their powers of execution as they are in theirpowers of understanding. An infant with the strength and authority of a manwould be a monster; for an infant has, as yet, established no linkages with lifesave those that minister to his own immediate desires. He has noknowledgetherefore his acts of power would be also acts of ignorance. Hehas no mature affection, but mostly an ego-centered pleasure in those whogive him what he wantstherefore his acts of power would aim solely at self-gratification. His imagination about other people is still a potential, no a

realized powertherefore his acts of power would be acts of ruthlessness. Inshort, it is safe for a human being to grow in physical strength and self-determination only if he is building such linkages of knowledge and feelingthat what he chooses to do is creative rather than destructive, social ratherthan antisocial.

By this standard, we might say that a person is properly maturingwhetherhe be 5 years old or 50---only if his power over his environment is matched bya growing awareness of what is involved in what he does. If his powers ofexecution forge ahead while his powers of understanding lag behind, he isbackward in his psychological growth--and dangerous to have around. Themost dangerous members of our society are those grownups whose powers

of influence are adult but whose motives and responses are infantile. G.B.Chisholm has said, So far in the history of the world there have never beenenough mature people in the right places. Never yet have enough peoplecome to their adulthood with such sound linkages between them and theirworld that what they choose to do is for their own and the common good.

The human being is born irresponsible. One of the strong ties that mustprogressively link the individual to his world is that of responsibility;resentment against that fact, or inability to realize it in action, indicates astoppage in psychological growth. Mature responsibility involves both a willingparticipation in the chores of life and a creative participation in the bettering of

life. The individual has to learn to accept his human role. To mature isprogressively to accept the fact that the human experience is a sharedexperience; the human predicament, a shared predicament. Maturity involvesthe development of a sense of functionthat there is work a person acceptsas his own, that he performs with a fair degree of expertness, and from whichhe draws a sense of significance. Maturity also involves the development offunction-habits. A child does not yet know how to work out spheres oforderlinesshis attention-span is too brief to enable him to have constancy ofpurpose. In a very real sense, A boys will is the winds will. A good manygrownups, without any legitimate reason, are as veering and unstable aschildren. Such seem so to lack a sense of cause and effect that they are

always miserably discovering that they have done the wrong thing. Some areself-excusingothers are self-dramatizing.


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The journey from irresponsibility to responsibility is full of hazards. Mandoes not grow automatically from dependence to independence, helplessnessto competence, irresponsibility to responsibility. The human being is born self-centered. He has as yet no clearly defined self in which to center. But evenless does he have any power to relate himself to other selves. A person is not

mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as oneamong others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.The very existence of society implies certain forces that temper the rawegocentricity of the newborn; for without such tempering, there cannot bemutual support, common purposes, structured reliance of man upon man.Growing up means growing intogrowing into a complex set of socialrelationships: linkages of affection, sympathy, shared work, shared beliefs,shared memories, good will toward fellow humans. End of quote

QUOTES ON LOVE (numbered so you can refer to them)

1. "We are always trying to be relieved of our incompleteness and to bridgethe gulf between one human being and another. Are we not like those piecesof coins broken in half for keepsakes with each of us forever seeking ourmissing part? May we be among the happy few to whom it is given to meetour other halves and be made complete." From The Symposium by Plato

2. Hell is other people. Jean Paul Sartre

3. What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.Fyodor Dostoevsky

4. For us how difficult to become whole,

a part is always left out

and that is the part we have to choose. Pope John Paul II

5. Somebody once said to me that it was a tragedy not to be loved. Surelythe real tragedy is not to love? Mark to Suyin, in the novel, A Many-Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin.

6. Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. Jean Anouilh

7. "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three partsdead." Bertrand Russell

8. All the following is from Erich Fromms The Art of Loving


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"Our deepest need is to overcome our separateness, to leave our prison ofaloneness. Humanity has emerged from the animal's instinctive adaptation,from our original oneness with nature. Once torn away from nature, we cannotreturn to it. We can only go forward by developing our reason, by finding anew harmony, a human one. We are life being aware of itself. This awareness

of the self as a separate entity, the awareness of our own short life span, ofour aloneness and separateness...would drive us insane could we not liberateourselves from this prison and reach out, unite ourselves with others and theworld outside.

"Each of us is confronted with the solution of the one and the same question:how to overcome separateness, how to transcend one's own individual life.Our Western culture offers many routines to relieve the anxiety ofseparateness. When the routine of work does not succeed...we overcome ourdespair by the routine of amusement and the satisfaction of buying newthings. Our happiness today consists of 'having fun'. But such routines are

only partial answers to the problem of existence. The full answer only lies inthe achievement of interpersonal union, in love.

"Love is an active power which unites the separate person with others; loveovercomes the sense of isolation and separateness yet permits us to beourselves. The male-female polarity is the basis for interpersonal creativity. Inthe love between man and woman, each of them is reborn. In love theparadox occurs that two beings become one yet remain two. Love is theactive concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Theaffirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in one'scapacity to love. Immature love says: 'I love because I am loved. I love youbecause I need you.' Mature love says: 'I am loved because I love. I need you

because I love you.' Love implies care, responsibility, respect and knowledge.

"Love is an orientation of character, an activity, not an attachment to anobject. People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object tolove - or be loved by - is difficult. Our whole culture is based on theimportance of the object...on the appetite for buying or exchanging objects.For the man an attractive girl - and for the woman an attractive man - are theprizes they are after. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they havefound the best object available on the market. This attitude - that nothing iseasier than to love - has continued to be the prevalent idea about love in spiteof the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity

which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet,which fails so regularly, as love.

"Love is an art - and like any art it must be learned. When you want to paintbeautiful pictures you do not wait for just the right object to paint beautifully,you learn the art first. So for love, we must master theory and practice first.Most importantly, the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern.Yet in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else in ourculture is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige,money, power - almost all our energy is used to learn how to achieve theseaims, and almost none to learn the art of loving." End of quote


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9. All of the following is from: The Primacy of Love, Paul Wadell

Morality begins in the awareness of our incompleteness. Humans areseekers of completion. Our lives are strategic endeavors to be united to whatwe think will bring us to completion, to our ultimate end. It is the one thing weseek for its own sake. We establish ourselves as persons through thepurposes we have that shape our actions and who we are. To what are youmost consistently turned because you believe it is the best for you?Happiness is the nurturing in us of the best and most promising desires, therichest and noblest love.

What is required for wholeness stands outside of us. Our restoration is notsomething we can provide ourselves; thus, it is not so much a question of self-development but of being developed by another.

To say that love is the key to our moral deliverance, and to identify it as apassion, is to know that our perfection comes by receiving a good we not onlylack, but by nature are incapable of giving to ourselves. As human beings westand in absolute need: we come to wholeness only by suffering a good otherthan our own. We are restored by someone other working on us; we arehealed through an agency other than our own. The distance between who weare now and who we are called to be is the work of one whose love providesfor us what we could never provide ourselves. End of quote

10. All of the following is from: The Psychology of Romantic Love, NathanielBrandon

"[in highest love]we are admired for the things we wish to be admired for, and

in a way and from a perspective that is in accord with our own view of life. Weare drawn to consciousnesses like our own. Romantic love entails a profoundand shared sense of life.

"A sense of life is the emotional form in which we experience our deepestview of existence...it is the emotional corollary of a metaphysics...reflectingthe subconsciously held sum of our broadest and deepest attitudes andconclusions concerning the world, life and ourselves. A 'soulmate' is one whoshares, in important respects, our sense of life.

"When we encounter another human being, we feel the presence of thatmusic within him or her. We sense how that individual experiences him- or

herself...we sense the level of excitement or the level of deadness. Inromantic relationships, the affirmative response of each party to the sense oflife of the other is crucial to the projection of mutual visibility.

"Two people discover their affinity by learning of each other's values anddisvalues. But mere abstract, intellectual agreement on particular subjects isnot sufficient by itself to establish an authentic sense-of-life affinity. Andwithout a significant sense-of-life affinity, no broad, fundamental, and intimateexperience of visibility is possible.

"But it is not a literal mirror-image of ourselves we are seeking. Thefoundation of a relationship lies in basic similarities. The excitement of a

relationship lies in complementary differences. The two together constitute thecontext in which romantic love is born. If the [loved one's perception] of us is


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consonant with our deepest vision of who we are, and if their view istransmitted by their behavior, we feel perceived, we feel psychologicallyvisible. We perceive the reflection of our self in their behavior.

"Also, when we encounter a person who thinks as we do...who values thethings we value [then] we can experience our self through our perception ofthat person. This is another form of experiencing psychological visibility. Thepleasure and excitement we feel in the presence of such a personunderscores the importance of the need that is being satisfied. We mayexperience a greater or lesser degree of visibility...of our total personalitydepending on the nature of the person with whom we are dealing and thenature of our interaction End of quote.

11. All of the following is from: Sex and Society, Kenneth Walker and PeterFletcher

The Platonic myth of the severed halves seeking for each other has this greatadvantage that it emphasizes a fact which is often forgotten, that sexuality issomething which enters as a factor into every aspect of the emotional life; it isnot concerned with reproduction alone. Love at its best extends far beyondthe narrow confines of the reproductive actthe highest function of sexualityis to assist the spiritual growth of the individual.

Berdyaev in The Destiny of Man, wrote The meaning and purpose of theunion between man and woman is to be found, not in the continuation of thespecies, or in its social import, but in personality, in its striving for thecompleteness and fullness of life. Sexuality is an impulse, which has

spread far beyond its original [lower animal species] boundaries, so that itcolors the whole of our emotional life. This explains why the individual whohas never managed to come to terms with his own sexuality is usually onewho has failed to come to terms with life in general.

Love is an expressive emotion, not a possessive one. It can be satisfied onlyby an active response, never by a passive one. We speak to an object and itis silent; we speak to a friend and he answers back; and our loving is fulfilledor frustrated according to his response. The need for love is a need, not forstrength in the self but for strength in the bond between selves. It is a need todiscover our personal reality in the only possible way, by discovering thepersonal reality of another being of our own kind in a relationship that is

reciprocal.

Love is the desire for contact or communication with another being likeourselves who makes his presence felt in a manner that reveals his essentialnature to us and by so doing reveals our essential nature to ourselves. So thesearch for love is a search for recognition and our desire to be loved is adesire to be recognized, not for what we do but for what we are. Love is whatremains when desire is satisfied and passion spent: the need to see onesown reality attested in the reality of another human being. End of quote

And a poem of mine on Liberty & Love
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The date below tells where and when this letter-poem was finished andmailed (before the Internet).

This is a testament to the wholenership that Katharine, my Other Half, and Iachieved in the short time we had together. She died in my arms fromterminal cancer in 1996.

I am seeking to beat the odds one more time. That I could enter into this kindof partnership/wholenership once was a wonderful throw of the dice (nod toMallarms poem I do not believe in fate). That I might do it twice would bepure de trop of the universe and I want this more than anything before I die.

Readers, whoever you may be, I wish this Great Love may be established inyour life.

February 21, 1993

From Austin, Texas to Brisbane, Queensland

For Katharine, My Life, Soon To Be My Wife

My Dearest Sunshine, My Beautiful Fact of How the World Works,

This is my letter of love to you, for you, of you. If I die before you, you willhave these words to come to as my world and while I am alive may theyrefresh you about my intentions.

I am speaking to you now and for the length of my life about our love for eachother and for this life which is now ours together.

When I decided to marry you, when I finally acknowledged the supreme valueyou are to me, I chose then as I choose every moment I think of you now, tolive my life as yours. That you are for me, that you are me, I am certain.

This is the fact of my love for you. This is my pledge of commitment. Surely asthe sun drives all life and motivates every molecule, you, as our relationship,are to me the essential force and law of my life. The rational response to sucha fact is to recognise and enact it. This I intend to do with you.


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And what joy this brings me! Here is a bouquet of thoughts and feelings thatemanated from the source of my life I know as you.

**

I am thinking about my commitment to you as one that is made to the best ofmyself. And I want to develop that commitment even as I develop ourrelationship which I am committed to.

*

I must watch myself that I really attend to and work at our relationship as

much or more than anything else I do. This is the opportunity of my lifetime tocome into my prime by using the discipline of my other self, you, to draw outthe best in me.

*

I want to use you to become more me.

You are my beautiful tool.

When I come to you I pass myself and when I go through you I surpassmyself.

We build upon each other, each other.

What we sum is exactly ourselves.

The world is large with us.

You are my mind, naked or clothed with thought.

You are wholly there in every part.

I am equal to more than me with you.

You are my marketplace, the even challenge of equal exchange.


15/18

There is nothing of you I want to change. I only want to exchange everythingfor you and you for everything.

You are happiness engendered, pleasures truth.

You apply all the laws of physics into the proof of yourself.

Your every why is a how.

Each star knows what to do with you.

Undeterred, my inertia continues along the straight line of our joy.

When I take you in my arms the world follows and enfolds.

*

The wonder of it is why it took me so long to act on the obvious with you. You

were always there waiting for me to realise what you must have alreadyknown that I knew. You were the maturity I had to acknowledge and grow into.

*

As I nod toward sleep suddenly I see your face nearer than mine couldpossibly be in any mirror, and it is filled with a smile of shining tenderness,and then you are in my arms and we are awake with the knowledge of lifeand it is as if we have just met as I stepped off the world of my habits into

sheer time intense with you.

*

I want to pay particular attention to you as my vision of what is, was and willbe. To actually see you fully in all tenses, see your loveliness changing in thetime I can be in part responsible for.

*


16/18

You called again yesterday morning, and I woke to a dialogue of joy, ourloves insouciance, a sprig of sunlight, a sheen of spring.

*

I remember your nipples tutoring the Big Dipper here and the Southern Crossthere, pointing to the brilliance of the constellations of meaning, ours, as mypenis points too, to be at home in you.

*

Our joy is contagious. We mirror the future. We are planning our fate together,

laughing with it. We hold, easily, our lives in each others hands. We arelearning what to do with each other.

*

I am so interested in you, what lies between your past and its future with me,as I summon the moment into a monument of your presence which is mycommitment to the furthering of our lives to come, together.

*

I think, therefore, I love you.

The futureso full of you that it encompasses my past.

I have the sheen of you on the fingertips of my every thought.

The particular you, locus of my effortless love, that clear flow under the bridgeof my desire to know the world as us.

Always I have known your touch, the world that aches behind your fingertipsasking me to be true to its law, the mutual exchange of life for love.

When I speak your pure name the sun dissolves on my tongue.


17/18

When I die I will make my due and it will be you. And what I was will hive inyour eyes as the light still coming from that no longer sun now alive as yoursight of what is.

The work of my world is the effortless love of you.

Our music as the score of stars tonight, Sirius, Betelgeuse, Polaris, all clearlymoving to the law of identity in my mind moving in yours.

Only now as I stand outside myself found in the love of you do I know howlittle I knew of me.

*

You are how the world works,

A factual audacity. Fresh

Smile, sunny metaphor of understanding.

Freedom is your comeliness

Which truth uses as your proof.

May this marriage be realitys mirror,

The apt expression we opt for,

Agape spanning the synaptic gap.

The mind we share is our market

Founded on the economy of care

And your supply demands more than me.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,You make me happy when the skies are blue,

So the old song goes that nourished my youth.

Now the song is you. My seed

Turns to your light and death learns the lesson of life.

Finally, I want to see you as you are

For your truth is so beautiful, whether

Particle or wave, reality caught collapsing

Into a choice which I now want to make.


18/18

You and I, exchange of joy for joy,

Your light bends around my mind

And between the flow of your thigh and breast

I settle into the universe as my part

Comes into your whole and I play

At being completely me.

The flutter of the small yellow butterfly

Fans the summer in your brown eyes.

You are the fragrance of the future,

Assay of the flash when our flesh meets,

And I love you so, history of the instant,

Beautiful thermodynamic climb of desire,

Life understood as sweet reversal of the Second Law.

*

That our marriage may become the marketplace of joy.

Freedom is our sovereign State and we obey

The law of identity through each other.

We have found ourselves equal to our exchange,

We trade in love.

You are my vital principle,

And we share the mind emerging from our matter.

*

May we always attend to each others end

As our first means and final meaning.

My Sunshine, my life, my wife soon to be,

I love you so, for the good of our whole.

5.quotes, freedom and love

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