On St. Patrick’s Day I am a one-eyed leprechaun!  I write this entry late in the day with a patch over one eye.  This morning quite early I received surgery on my left eye.  The treatment to my retina promises to improve my vision.  For now though, until the followup visit with the physician I have the patch, and get around without any depth perception.  There are lessons to be learned when circumstance temporarily takes away one eye.  One eye is not as good as two, I can assure you.

Last night we had an interesting discussion about the nature of the self, from antiquity, beginning with Plato/Socrates, then Aristotle, to late antiquity, the Roman era and up to the present.  The thesis offered by the essayist whose words formed the basis of our exchange was that Aristotle’s point of view, and invention of language (Aristotle coined the term, analysis, to analyze) marked a turning point in thought.  Aristotle’s application of number, to the classification, and analysis of the natural world was the precursor to the scientific method which was to begin development at the end of the Enlightenment era here in the West.  Plato and his mentor Socrates applied reason to question “taken for granted verities,” in a context of a culture infused with gods and goddesses.  Aristotle takes a step further, applying number to quantify that world, cracking the door a bit to the secular world which we know today, built for the most part on reason and the product of scientific analysis.

In consequence — was the self as felt and expressed by the citizen of Athens of Pericles day, different by comparison to the self as expressed by the typical European or American?  The answer has to be yes.  A reciprocity exists between the culture into which one is born, absorbing values and perspectives, and the self which is adapted to that culture.

Now a provocative poem by Ranier Maria Rilke.  These verses posit that man rather than the God, or multiple gods as the pivot point, the driver of reality.  It is not that god, God, or the gods have disappeared, — but what will divinity do when this single human’s life is extinguished by mortality?   What will you do, God, when I die?

What Will You Do?

Rainer Maria Rilke –

Translated by B. Deutsch and A. Yarmolinsky

What will you do, God, when I die?
I am your jar (if cracked, I lie?)
Your well-spring (if the well go dry?)
I am your craft, your vesture I—
You lose your purport, losing me.

When I go, your cold house will be
Empty of words that made it sweet.
I am the sandals your bare feet
Will seek and long for, wearily.

Your cloak will fall from aching bones.
Your glance, that my warm cheeks have cheered
As with a cushion long endeared,
Will wonder at a loss so weird;
And, when the sun has disappeared,
Lie in the lap of alien stones.

What will you do, God? I am feared.