Oh damn, still in this dream.

Midwinter spring is its own season...

I always read 'Little Gidding' in January. I'd advise folk that, although 'difficult', it repays work. And when finished for the third time it gives a sensation like few others. However, my friend Strephon is of another opinion, and thinks the sensation as he experienced it, is to be avoided at all costs.
When all the mechanical problems of the universe are solved there will still remain the problems which deal with morals.
When these are all dealt with there will still be the question of taste: What colour should it be?
The 'philosophical problem' of taste is not something I've considered for many years.
The more mundane and everyday question of taste is not one I've thought about for a few years either, assuming, quite naturally, that my taste was excellent. (Sometimes we delude ourselves thus, alas.)
My taste may be excellent for my particular world, but when my world intersects with others, it may still be found wanting. Which is, I suppose, the purpose of manners and courtesy. It is a good thing that we have the ability to give redress, and repair mistakes and error before the disaster of high words exchanged, blows given and recieved, and honour only satisfied by the exchange of fire or steel at dawn in some shady woodland supported by seconds and with a doctor on hand to staunch the flow of blood.
Nevertheless, just as there is something formal about the genesis of a disagreement, there is also something almost formal about the disengagement from debate.

As I started with Little Gidding, I'll end with it's closing passage, which may be all you need to know, actually.


We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.