At the House of the Rhyming Weir

An idea is sometimes sweetened by refusing to be expressed,

if it attends, solicitously, to this failure, and urges us on to

discover the true impediment to its adaptation. In that

spirit, and bearing that intention within us, we note here, as

elsewhere, there are generally three alternative courses. The

first is simply to accept without question an explanation

someone in our proximity, and whom we know, proffers and

then elects to modify out of concern that small details are

escaping to set up camp opposite what is being said. The

second is to surrender one’s reluctance to withdraw from the

presence of an unsolved problem by grabbing crudely at

vacant affirmations that nothing further need be done, that

everything to be accomplished was accomplished well before

current advocates approached the threshold, coaxed forward

by the desire to indulge their own vanity. The third is to

remain absolutely uncommitted to any specific course, and

to insist that the process begin anew each time, contending

that no information will ever be adequate to the task of

judgment, that the requirements, as they evolve, will make

each element moot, or at a minimum place the likelihood

of resolution in ever greater doubt over time, with the

paradoxical effect that the impulse to continue is not

thereby diminished, only channeled into a narrower, more

determined form. Although no benefits are likely to accrue

from this last course, it’s unquestionably the one most often

followed, owing perhaps to people’s need to test the strength

of a membrane designed to repel assault, or their perennial

enchantment with kaleidoscopic complications spreading

over the earth, as time walks through the sky.