I. Seeing the future -- I live most of all in perpetual autumn: everything
is beautiful and about to fall apart.
II. Sacrifice proves wealth -- The purpose of a sacrifice is not a
merchant's exchange of one thing for another, but of the willful
destruction of a valuable possession. By removing something that
assured security, one intimates that the products of internal wealth will
produce again, and thus aspiration is reinvigorated instead of resting
comfortably on what the past provided.
III. To say we are under control is a significant linguistic overstatement.
Most people are their own jailers and would have no idea what to do if
they freed themselves from their self-imposed bindings.
IV. Genius is when a secret momentum tends to push things so they do
not easily come to rest. An effortless touch begins a long motion and
then a flower is waiting for me in the morning.
V. Joy to the world -- the whole world? No! That is too vulgar.
VI. We are the most open-minded ones: we recuse ourselves and defer every
judgment of what should happen to us and others to whatever nature decrees.
Our inner cheerfulness is not reactionary, but a spiritual realization that
in the long term life is fair and that we are well suited for whatever might
come.
VII. Spectator's admission -- I don't know. I couldn't know; consequently,
no expectation of knowing. In full awareness of ignorance, I can only
explore, speculate, or accept the inherent lack of available knowledge.
VIII. Breaking the stalemate -- taking decisions is a race against the
dissolution of time. Waiting rarely provides greater information for a wiser
choice, but typically is a passive means of discarding opportunity.
IX. Etymology of northern psychology -- Long winters and long summer days
suggest that what is given will be taken away, but then given again. This
would make one serious in times of difficulty but not value unwon gifts,
knowing they will vanish in a replenishing cycle. What loss could be
taken too seriously? Or what temporary change imagined as other than
transitory? Caution, carefulness, provisionality, and lack of excitement
would be natural among such people. The consequences of this are
physiologically rooted and the cause of great misunderstandings with
the southern type; they evolved under different conditions solving different
problems.
X. Composition is one of several ways of making a net to snare butterflies
from the air, or seducing them to land beside us.
XI. Inhibitions as a personal choice
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