Analect 2.90x

30 April 2007. Much sunshine, and two left shoes, for Inke. Or perhaps no shoes at all. Worn as a kind of defense--a shoring up--as on that morning, testing the waters, when all seemed safe enough. But then, out came the long knives, stealthily, one at a time. First, the women in black--demanding a plan, a strategy, a one-word summation. "Tell us, in one sentence, the meaning of your life." Then: "How does it contribute to the x or the y or the z?" Always coordinates, as if science--the planned experiment, the dream of repeatability, would alleviate anxiety, doubt. Another tack: historical precedent. "Here are twenty examples of things people have done before you..." Or a summation via the history of the mind: "If you read Giordano Bruno..." But Bruno may be the right case, after all. His desire to be a churchman, running afoul of those in power--the gun-emplacements of Rome--so he wanders: Toulouse, Paris, Wittenburg, Prague. England, even, until they catch up with him at the end. All is unique--that was his vision. The monad--an ideal unit of experience--a manifestation of the divine. How else to measure except in the daily step--one after another, the gestures and touches that can be known, exchanged even--an accumulation of primitive capital--love...