Hi [ ]--
I just received your reply. Your concern for my safety is most touching, and I don't quite know what to say, except that I'm profoundly moved and grateful. Not to demean you at all, but I wish I could arouse similar sentiments in my immediate family. Other than my parents and one aunt (who react as you do), no one else seems to be bothered to notice my existence any more. I speak here of siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. They seem to think I'm the 'black sheep' of the family (actions do speak louder than words) and therefore deserving of ostracism, since they seem to think (as far as I can tell) that I have scandalized THEIR REPUTATIONS.
Well, forgive me if I am wrong, but what is worse in your view--to have made some bad mistakes in years past, or to fail to show love and compassion to one's suffering fellow-man in the present? In my own humble opinion, I believe that a person whose heart is filled with God-like love and compassion (whatever his other failings) cannot--by definition--be a bad person.
It grieves me that so many people in my immediate family have not yet learned this most important life-lesson, and I marvel that the same DNA that produced me has also produced them. Very hard not to judge, eh? We are only human, after all ...
I awoke this morning in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to find about five inches of snow on the ground, with an accumulation of about eight to ten inches expected. But at least it's not ICE. Snow can be handled--if done with care and caution. ...
The snow is briskly falling right now, even as I write this, and occasionally the wind slackens, and the mystical flakes really come alive then, magically and dreamily floating on the still air. Ah, what a wonderful sight! It is so profoundly, hauntingly beautiful--it seems to renew the world overnight (as Thoreau said), to transform this tired, dreary, mundane world of sorrows and regrets into such an innocent, childlike wonderland that (in me at least) it helps renew a sense of hope that things can eventually get better. This beautiful, pure, white, driven snow--a gift from God, in the sense that it helps relieve our burden of sorrow, by transforming our perceived world into something almost indescribably lovely and beautiful, into something truly divine--a glimpse of Heaven itself, as it were, and thereby giving us greater hope for the future.
My poet's soul is profoundly moved by a spectacle such as this (even as the practical, truck-driver side of me worries ...).
This pure and beautiful snow, with its transforming power, puts me in mind of what Nietzsche wrote in 1889, even as the madness had started to destroy his mind:
"All the world is transfigured, and the Heavens are filled with Joy..."
And this leads me to ask: had the madness, before it completely destroyed his Reason, perhaps at first briefly afforded some rare glimpse into regions Celestial--into the hidden beauty of this world, ordinarily denied to us mere Mortals? The Japanese have a word for this 'hidden' or subtle beauty: shibui. From Nietzsche's comment, such a thing would seem at least possible--even if it was only in his tragically-deluded mind at that point.
I would like to think so, at any rate: that the capricious gods, before depriving him of his wonderfully brilliant mind forever, gave him one last, final (and very cruel) gift of insight--the epiphany of all epiphanies--into the incredible, marvelous beauty of spirit this world possesses, but which beauty we frequently fail, due to our mental conditioning to the contrary, to properly see and behold.
Oh, how truly the gods do mock us, and use us for their Sport!
T.J. White
15 January, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Monday, January 01, 2007
Letter to a new acquaintance (excerpt)
My driving time is also my thinking time. It lets me get away from other people and pressures which would otherwise constantly occupy my thoughts, & largely prevent me from being able to think & reflect about things (which is how I prefer to spend much of my time anyway). I am a philosopher, you see. The word "philosopher" (in case you don't already know) comes from two Greek words, "philo-" meaning "love of", and "sophia", meaning "wisdom" or "knowledge". So, since I am a person in love with knowledge and learning things, I believe I truly am a "philosopher". Driving big rigs over the wide open stretches of America merely takes me away from normal, everyday life (like Thoreau in the woods), and allows me the time and opportunity to really think. I never was happy with the 'normal' nine-to-five routine and competitiveness of the life I once tried to pursue. And finding that I was not likely to be handed a job as a college professor merely based on my good looks (ha!), I went out on the open road as a perpetual traveller, since I was better-known there anyway.
Many of the people in my family are professional educators, and a number of us also write, so I guess I "fit right in". My first cousin, Dr. [ ] White, is Associate Professor of Mathematics at [ ] College in [ ]--quite a brilliant human being. His late Dad (my uncle) was even smarter, and could never be "stumped" by even the most difficult, "unsolveable" mathematical problems which his son (the Mathematician, who couldn't even solve them himself!) would present to him!
My field, however, is not mathematics, but rather life itself. I am mostly a serious, even somber person. I do often find situations funny and laughable, but there is nothing trivial or frivolous about me at all. I do not like to waste my time with personal interactions with most people I see from day to day. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they are very few. I was almost certainly mildly autistic as a boy and young man, and much of this tendency still carries over to the present day. It seems (from what I've read on the subject) that the frequent drawback to having a brilliant mind is also being autistic (and thus antisocial). In other words, the same gene (or genetic combination) which produces the brilliant left-brained mind also seems to produce autism (much of the time, anyway).
I guess you could also say that--due to my autism--I'm still trying to find where and how I "fit" into this crazy, mixed-up world, and feel I need to distance myself from other people to give myself the time to think things through properly.
I hope I have not put you off by saying any of this. But I do want you to realize who and what you are dealing with here.
Oh, you are very right about Illinois being very gray and depressing in the Winter! I have seen so much of it over these last few weeks that I will be very happy indeed when Spring (and some greenness) finally arrives!
Yes, there is a stark, bare, almost primitive beauty to that barren landscape--if one has the eyes with which to see it. I saw similar stark, raw, wild and primitive beauty in several places when I was in South Africa twenty some years ago--many places there look much like our Great Plains.
(Oh, and since you might have wondered about the French I used--) I am also a self-taught student of several languages--including French--but mostly the older forms, like Medieval English, Medieval French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Gothic, Medieval Old High German, etc. I am not so much interested in what now IS, as much as I am interested in HOW IT GOT THAT WAY. I have always liked to delve into the causes of things--the "whys" and "wherefores" of existence.
Terrence.
Many of the people in my family are professional educators, and a number of us also write, so I guess I "fit right in". My first cousin, Dr. [ ] White, is Associate Professor of Mathematics at [ ] College in [ ]--quite a brilliant human being. His late Dad (my uncle) was even smarter, and could never be "stumped" by even the most difficult, "unsolveable" mathematical problems which his son (the Mathematician, who couldn't even solve them himself!) would present to him!
My field, however, is not mathematics, but rather life itself. I am mostly a serious, even somber person. I do often find situations funny and laughable, but there is nothing trivial or frivolous about me at all. I do not like to waste my time with personal interactions with most people I see from day to day. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they are very few. I was almost certainly mildly autistic as a boy and young man, and much of this tendency still carries over to the present day. It seems (from what I've read on the subject) that the frequent drawback to having a brilliant mind is also being autistic (and thus antisocial). In other words, the same gene (or genetic combination) which produces the brilliant left-brained mind also seems to produce autism (much of the time, anyway).
I guess you could also say that--due to my autism--I'm still trying to find where and how I "fit" into this crazy, mixed-up world, and feel I need to distance myself from other people to give myself the time to think things through properly.
I hope I have not put you off by saying any of this. But I do want you to realize who and what you are dealing with here.
Oh, you are very right about Illinois being very gray and depressing in the Winter! I have seen so much of it over these last few weeks that I will be very happy indeed when Spring (and some greenness) finally arrives!
Yes, there is a stark, bare, almost primitive beauty to that barren landscape--if one has the eyes with which to see it. I saw similar stark, raw, wild and primitive beauty in several places when I was in South Africa twenty some years ago--many places there look much like our Great Plains.
(Oh, and since you might have wondered about the French I used--) I am also a self-taught student of several languages--including French--but mostly the older forms, like Medieval English, Medieval French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Gothic, Medieval Old High German, etc. I am not so much interested in what now IS, as much as I am interested in HOW IT GOT THAT WAY. I have always liked to delve into the causes of things--the "whys" and "wherefores" of existence.
Terrence.
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