Aurelius book 2, and the brutes of brutish nature.

How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them; what is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapoury fame; how worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable and dead they are-all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe.  To observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give reputation; what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at in itself, and by the abstractive power of reflective resolves into their parts all the things which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then consider it to be nothing else than an operation of nature; and if any one is afraid of an operation of nature he is a child.  This however, is not only an operation of nature, but it is also a thing which conduces to the purposes of nature.  To observe too how man comes near to the deity, and by what part of him, and when this part of man is so disposed.

As pencils to remonstrative emperors are we to the salads of the eternal old ones in the far reaches, such is life, a spit, a whisper, a vapor upon the larger form.

To fear anything of nature is to be eternally trembling, I suppose, from some such thing or the other, and today I saw the prettiest sun-spill through the river hardwoods again.  There was a little house nestled with a big old shop beside, and it was secluded in shadow, with the furthest edge of grass meeting sunshine.

It was as if I caterwauled-out and God opened an eye to see what I was on about.

And I was saying, "Its okay, now.  Stormclouds gone, my master."

Indeed, it was never nature that I feared or much construed and constricted against, but the machinations of the other, as is also said from Aurelius, "man is political", and such, so we have the concerns of parts of that spider web holding something we don't want and cannot contend therewith.

I spit my hot displeasure.

When they pay for at least one of my meals, I'll worry about their opinions, but until then, I take it with a grain of salt that they have to hold a corporate line or lose their meal ticket; meanwhile I have not such fetters and chop and kick and cajunk against any injustices, real or imaginary.

Much too brutish perhaps to fear nature much, and too self-absorbed to give much creedence to outside persons; more dog, possum or squirrel than man, perhaps, except that I had certain enumerated rights and priveleges, privelege to do certain and uncertain things, restraints then on restrictions that would hinder my uncertain things, until they could write a new low to generate tax revenue.

Brutish, willfully clueless, and aiming away from other things towards targets in other climes, other precipice in the distance, hid from the others in a fog, chess player and all, giving over today to win the whole week, giving other week to win the larger month, still unfearful of nature, a nature that was at once pretty and seemingly fragile and brutish at the same time, that West Virginia schoolmaid, and like the man with all the screens, it was not death I feared, at all, and I could ascribe neither good nor ill to nature, but the kind of cold celestial indifference, the stars glowing cold, and the cold burning off as fog or steam, the juices of the infinite stars painting the sky, and positively floating along.

A green phlegm of displeasure-a gleat-of all the hassifract and jazzercise and all, put away like vomiting out the remains of a gorging on a feast of evil.

I could be content to claim I did not know, that I knew I did not know, but hesitated to damn the people that did know, though I had never been given occasion to make that decision: I had expected at one time I would be a proper throat cutter if necessity called me to it, but I rather also partly expect their own mattrices to spell their certain doom at some point.......

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