To write something, anything at all is only one reason for starting the day at Starbucks. Perhaps a good conversation will be possible?

Wednesday is a day of good fortune since I have benefited from a good chat with Doug, as well as prospect of reflecting upon some aphorisms from Beyond Good and Evil.  “Life” just is. To live, simply “to be” is to wake up on a high wire. The performance, a high stakes act of balancing. There is no standard other than whatever improvisation of circumstances can be agreed upon and executed…  In retrospect we may turn to assess the result and applaud ourselves and others with whom we’ve made common cause.  Bravo! Our vanity takes a bow, we imagine applause…  Some imagine divine applause.

94
Human maturity: this means rediscovering the seriousness we had towards
play when we were children.

This is one of my favorite sayings. I think fulfillment as an adult demands the ability to play as we once were able, effortlessly, with abandon as a child… Remember a time before you felt the weight of responsibility – how it was! How magic were those days of play. Can I call upon those memories, to concentrate, to conjure once more that magic?  Yes!

100
We all pretend to ourselves that we are more naive than we are: this is how
we relax from other people.

The social self that we present is a simplification of our many layered selves. And so it has to be. That’s how we manage a respite, some space of relaxation… Relationships quickly become complicated, and especially male to female. Best is a measured exposé of what matters… To reveal too much too quickly is like jumping into the deep end, before learning to swim.

101
Today, someone with knowledge might well feel like God becoming
animal.

A professor once said to me that he thought it impossible that a well educated individual could be a happy person.  I’ve never forgot that moment, impressed in memory, a snapshot as if time stood still. Knowledge has a reciprocal cost, that cannot be recognized up front…

106
Music allows the passions to enjoy themselves.

Yes! Music is Dionysian, an invitation to lose oneself in reverie. I think the ecstasy of music ought to be religion enough for any of us.

108
There are absolutely no moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation of
the phenomena . . .

I have returned in thought to this statement often. I think this one of those cornerstone assertions, a life-jacket that keeps us afloat in the flood of conventional moralism that otherwise drowns us, transforming us into the “walking dead.”

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Butler

This tune by Cher is spot-on for me, demonstrating the point of aphorism 106.  Believe, 1998, Cher’s biggest hit. The auto tune works lending an ethereal quality to her voice.