My Dear Vegetables

 I loathe the happiness of all these people who don't know they're unhappy. Their human life is full of what, in a true sensibility, would produce a surfeit of anxieties. But since their true life is vegetative, their sufferings come and go without touching their soul, and they live a life that can be compared only to that of a man with a toothache who won a fortune - the genuine good fortune of living unawares, the greatest gift granted by the gods, for it is the gift of being like them, superior just as they are (albeit in a different fashion) to happiness and pain.

That's why, in spite of everything, I love them all. My dear vegetables!

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 313

FP - "the genuine good fortune of living unawares, the greatest gift granted by the gods, superior just as they are (albeit in a different fashion) to happiness and  pain."  How long have humans tried to live lives equal to that of the gods? The answer is exactly how long the gods have punished them for wanting exactly that. Yahweh tossed Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden for eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the crime of essentially trying to rival God. However, in the end, at least according to Pessoa, we were trying too hard. the truth is not a studied Stoic or Buddhist transcendence, but instead a witless "living unawares." Of course, are they actually living? Way too many people - apparently around 46% of the adult US population - are apparently living, and voting, vegetatively. 

Shanks and Cutlets of Destiny

 I feel more kinship and intimacy with certain characters described in books and certain images I've seen in prints than I feel with many so-called real people, who are of that metaphysical insignificance known as flesh and blood. And 'flesh and blood' in fact describes them rather well: they're like chunks of meat displayed in the window of a butcher's, dead things bleeding as if they were alive, shanks and cutlets of Destiny.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 317

OK, first off I should just go ahead and admit that one of my fantasy baseball team is going to be retitled Shanks and Cutlets of Destiny of next year. In the Irrational League, which I helped found thirty-five years ago, my team is a bottom dweller season after season, mainly because I just don't pay much attention to baseball any more. I'm hanging around in the league mainly to be supportive of my friends. Consequently, I tend to swap out the names pretty routinely now, mainly to preserve the sanctity of the Atlanta Crackers - my original team name, and one in which I won a lot. My gross incompetence now besmirches the legacy of that proud name, and I rotate in and out of other names And, seriously, who could not root for the Shanks and Cutlets of Destiny.

More importantly, Pessoa is, once again, discussing his love of the world of literature and art, where true reality resides, and his mistrust of the coarse physical world that surrounds us. Yes, he's being more than a bit of over the top, but he's correct in recognizing that what we think is important is often anything but. Not that family and friends aren't important, obviously, and he was loyal to both, but instead that we place so much importance on people who are of absolutely no importance whatsoever. What's more, our society - now more than then - focus our attention, endlessly, on the "famous" and "interesting" at the expense of truly meaningful. Is it any wonder that we live in the age of Donald Trump?

My Constant Helper

 When I moved into the cabin I assumed that Cici (aka Nut Job aka the Vertical Cat) would be my boon companion, but it turned out to be Mollie. It might just be an issue of scheduling in that Cici makes it to Janet's lap first in the morning, and Mollie uses me as a fallback. However, she's usually up here at my desk, lounging on one of my prayer rugs, when she's not trying to knock my laptop to the ground because I have the temerity to try and write when she needs/demands attention.

The work session blew up pretty quickly when Mollie heard a bird outside and just about leapt to her death trying to climb out the window.