The Puck of the Afterlife

Evening Primrose, not related to Primula Vulagaris or True Primrose

Baxter is finding it very difficult to accept the possibility that Corgi Archibald likes painted garden gnomes and the Heiress, whose name is Delyth Primrose, does not like painted garden gnomes. It's those sort of little details that cause Baxter to doubt the authenticity of my recollection, sends him running to The Spleen for confirmation. Meanwhile The Spleen is not only a geriatric, he's unreliable, he has his own agenda. He has persuaded the aging collective that at the moment of death a committee from on high will descend and each one of our constituent parts will be tried. Those given an A grade for their service to our shared life will go to heaven. Those given a B grade will be given their next opportunity to shine again by being reborn in someone else. Anything below a B grade goes directly to hell, none of this Dante nonsense there's only one level, flames and little people with pointed sticks. Baxter, the aneurysm, has no chance of avoiding the little people, and neither do I, which is why we are both interested in the possibility of an almighty who believes in Grace, it's the effort grade for a jolly good sort of chap whose true virtues are well hidden, they make excellent and cheerful company for a perfection that seeks to lighten the endless millennia of monotony with a little diversity. The Puck of the Afterlife amongst the madrigals and charades. Can you imagine, a damn good reason to hope for the Nietzschean Limbo of a B grade.

Megalohydrothalassophobia or Fear of Sea Creatures

Unlikely to be Timothy Grass, could be Pigeon Grass, less likely to be

 the exotic Melica Transsilvanica paying a visit

I have a Grass AP, or is it an ap. Here the rivers are running greenish yellow with grass pollen, my inputs and outputs are sludged-up with a grizzly sticky goo, I can't hear the current seventeen year Cicada hatching  and I know exactly why Jean-Paul Sartre wore a tie at the beach. For him meaninglessness was full of possibilities, a great adventure, but unfortunately as a callow youth of fourteen he'd developed a fear of sea creatures, particularly Crabs and Lobsters. Very understandable. In an attempt to cure him of his Sea Creature Phobia a former student of his suggested mescaline while looking at projections of assorted sea creatures. It was the latest thing in emergency psychiatric therapy. The experiment turned into a really bad trip for Our Jean-Paul, he had flashbacks for years, and he had adverse and often irrational things to say about the Saint Anne Hospital in Paris, and about his former student Doctor Lagache. 

Cretin as an alternative

The Bloom of a Tall Fescue

Over time the word cretin has become associated with the more negative meanings in box of rocks stupid. Romans blessed Christians with the word crestin or an unfortunate person, which was polite of them. And there's an iodine deficiency called cretinism which can result in congenital deficiencies among mountain people, nothing to laugh at. The dilemma here where I live is what to do with Baxter's endless use of the word retard.  

 

The Shared Condition of Uncertainty

The Bloom of Sweet Vernal Grass

My own view of Sartre's existentialism is positive. His idea of a Shared Condition is a rather beautiful one. My own negative view of Sartre's critics essentially revolve around the accusation that they've allowed themselves to become the hapless subjects of quasi-religious quackery, a form of wish-fullness that offers hope to the frail of mind, the wide eyed, the trustful and the bitter of heart.  A group to which Sartre applied the title Bad Faith. We used to be called Cynics, and even Nihilists by the Cretin-hood of Elders who'd given up on the perchance to dream and needed a bunch of confident softies to sneer at. The central theme of such a classic human reaction is the ever present uneasiness inherent in certainty. I use the word Cretin for a positive reason. It describes the moment when certainty asks you to just start making stuff up to demonstrate your point. Oddly, the origin of that splendid word Nihilism - from the Latin Nothing - was in an adverse intellectual reaction to the approximately 47,000 words of Wilhelm Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that had shamelessly announced the end of worry because a great mind had rationally demonstrated that our fate was obviously beyond our control. The funny thing is, any respectable definition of Life, particularly the human experience of the condition, might suggest it's actually the other way around. Our fate isn't handed down, nor is it already in place when we arrive, thanks to uncertainty from beginning to end we have something to say about pretty much everything until we surrender to idea.