4 Apr 2006: I don't know...

Today, Gaughan stated that "All great teachers of mankind get killed." Why do they get killed? Their thoughts. They were great thinkers, and they were killed for their thoughts. Or were they killed because of their thoughts? Or even, indirectly, by their thoughts? Can thoughts kill? Yes, I think so. They can drive one to madness because thoughts are unrelenting. My brain is beginning not to accomodate to all my thoughts (not that all of them are poignant, but they are there nonetheless). "Things that matter hurt...well, let's talk about whores now - something we can all agree on."

T.S. Eliot was right. "April is the cruellest month."

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Spring, with all its exquisiteness, cannot be enjoyed by students like me because we are eternally writing papers about things that ultimately don't matter and studying for tests that in the end don't amount to anything but a red letter on a paper. Everything is a tease. There is no disposable time for enjoyment. No time to fly a kite or nap under a tree or do absolutely nothing at all. I shouldn't even be doing this, for Walker Percy will not read itself. But the mind does need a respite, or all of its thoughts will overwhelm it and slowly drive one to madness. I think I'm well on my way.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

This is our destiny if we do not live life for living, but rather for some seemingly powerful, material thing.

I have said all this to say this: I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know anything about anything anymore. I don't know anything at all. Nothing...

Thank you, T.S. Eliot.