Saturday

18 February 2017

— beneath the feeders, a dozen wood doves with their clerical white collars

Good Morning All,

As threatened, here comes my English Philosophy. It had to be rendered in one paragraph. A little bit of it I shamelessly stole from unremembered authors (e.g. real roses in imaginary gardens), but most of it is mine.

I would tell you that you are under absolutely no obligation to read it, but I said that about my short story Bridge Work, and you all believed me. 

To tempt you, I’ll just add that the NEAS&C, the snoop group that accredited us, gave at the end of its report five commendations; my English philosophy came second, right after our school’s international atmosphere.

Language is an Argo that sails us inward and outward to places we could not otherwise reach. Precise language is surpassingly beautiful and liberating. In any given situation, the language that most aptly articulates the speaker/writer's thoughts and feelings is correct usage. Tone means. Where literal language provides the line, figurative language affords the color. Thought is rarefied feeling and language is the incarnation of those thoughts--the means by which we can transcend our aloneness and make ourselves known to each other. Language identifies. Rigorous and objective analytical thinking conjoined with healthy skepticism helps us apprehend reality and appreciate truth. Style and structure inform content. Literature thrives where the music of words measures their meanings. Because literature addresses universal concerns of the human condition, it is immediately relevant to our lives, regardless of time, place or culture. Literary ambiguities both clarify and celebrate life's lovely mysteries. With graceful irony, literature draws us more deeply into life even as it provides a refuge from our lives. Literature is not factual, but true, growing real roses in imaginary gardens. Winding through the weave of all literature is the golden thread that truth--however unpleasant--is preferable to illusion--however comforting. Because literature challenges our complacencies and most cherished vanities, reading it requires acts of intellectual, moral, spiritual, and emotional courage, which combine into aesthetic experiences that enlarge and sustain us. Imagining ourselves into literature will quicken our very being to life's immediacy and help us calmly seize the unknown number of sunrises remaining to us. Literature takes us on the great outward and inward quests for the salt and spice and savor of life, rendering us wiser voyagers in the human condition, and returning us to our home ports richer in our gentler sympathies for others and ourselves. 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron