Equobenity - No Choice

There are many obvious situations over which we have no choice: the date of our birth, our parents, where we are born, with what love or (resentment) we are received into life.

We have no choice over our DNA, our gender, or our race. At least in 2014.

We have no choice over the weather, other people's wars, over pestilence.

We have no choice over other people's ideas about us.

By situations over which we do have choice we are riven or exalted, forged or undone.

In the midst of choice, suddenly we lose choice. The remainder of this scroll deals with these.

• • •

Events and Tradeoffs, Closure and Sacrifice

There is an enormous category of choice where an action has been taken can't be taken back. You knew the tradeoffs and you know the choice is final.

For instance, once you choose to become pregnant you cannot go back on that choice: the pregnancy can be aborted or the responsibility for the pregnancy can be accepted. The possibility of pregnancy may have been known but the tradeoff may have been the simple desire for sex or a teenager's ill-considered statement about becoming an adult and promptly embarking on the sexual life of an adult. Whichever of the many possibilities prompted the choice, the choice of not-to-be-pregnant is now lost. An entirely new situation is at hand, a new equobenity. The next choice will be made from one of the two sides of this new equobenity.

The ongoing process of moving from one equobenity to another feels as though we are moving through fields of equobenities, sometimes on paths, sometimes wandering at random or making our own paths. Most of the time we don't notice we are making choices.

However, even for those who have no interest in choice as a subject of study, there suddenly does come that tension between two things that informs you a choice will be made, by you, or without you. Choices like: tell your parents/rely on friends, or, much later, go to your daughter's graduation or to the funeral of your first husband? For most people, these will be a moments of big tension, an important choice that must and will be made.

Each choice has its own story. The accumulation of stories is how our life becomes filled with events. Eventually our character and our satisfactions, or conversely, our character and our disappointments, have been created by all these choices and their stories.

• • •

"Even with having control of my office, it's still a chore to find time for both work and family. I make breakfast for my kids and take them to school. I'm home before bedtime and during most weekends, but my son really needs more of me. It leaves me no time all for me, and I'm really tired. To succeed in one world, it seems that I have to fail in another."

Don and Jeanne Elium, Raising A Son

(Beyond Words Publishing Inc., Hillsboro, Oregon, 1992, paperback)

This is the voice of a man whose present situation was created by a long series of choices, his own and those in which he merely acquiesced. Maybe some of them were bad, maybe all of them were good. We don't know enough from this one paragraph to make an assessment about good and bad, we can only tell he's in a tight spot. He has sacrificed a life of being more or less alone as he kept choosing a life with a family. What he's been choosing can't be undone.

Also, although he feels really good about it sometimes, he may feel differently in only a few minutes. If his choice was a thoughtful one, the moments of regret or frustration are only periods of time to be lived through. He is thankful these were his choices and the sacrifices worthwhile.

We make a choice, the minutes pass, the months and decades pass; there is no going back. What we choose becomes reality; we forget there was once an alternative. As John Gardner says in "Grendel":

"Things fade: alternatives exclude."

Of Gardner's statement therapist Irvin D. Yalom comments:

"Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word "decide" means “slay”, as in homicide or suicide.)"

Irvin D. Yalom M.D., "Love's Executioner"

(Harper Perennial, a division of Harper/Collins Publishers, 1989, p.10)

Robert Frost adds the enrichment of consciousness to the awareness of finality:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

poem, "Road Not Taken", 1916

Frost remembers making the choice and knew at the time it was different from what many would have chosen. Because he remembers, he is able to view with perspective the consequences of his decision. Not wanting to muddy the poem with either sentimental sadness (u.) or with smug self-satisfaction (o.), the speaker doesn't divulge whether he is regretful or content with his choice. What's important is the choice itself and how it made "all the difference" to his life.

Each such final choice only presents itself once. Even if events swing around and provide us with a “second chance”, the context will be new and ourselves different, perhaps more flexible, perhaps less flexible, perhaps jaded, perhaps wiser.

Because choice is like color, found anywhere and everywhere, we don't particularly notice it any more than we notice our breathing. If we did observe choice, its behavior and its requirements, its rewards and punishments, we might react differently to those choices which will come around for another chance --and which choices get made once and for all.

• • •

There are good reasons why we don't want to know much about choice. We often feel anguish when we cue one side of an equobenity to come onstage, knowing we will have to watch the other side turn its back, exit deeper into the wings, and let itself out the stage door.

Perhaps it was something we loved to do. Something we craved, some secret dream, some great love --lost forever. There is a tragic irony in the haunting difficulty of choosing one side and knowing the other side will step away. Is there anyone who has not participated in some of the following choices, sometimes in satisfaction and even joy, but often in pain?

to marry --or not

to take one job --and not another

to have a child --or not

to adopt a child --or not

to tell a lie --or not

to commit a crime --or not

to send one's child to a private school --or not

to disobey orders --or not

to learn your lines --or not

to sign a contract --or not

to run for office --or not

to run for President --or not

to reveal a secret --or not

to reveal classified information --or not

to remove life support systems --or not

These and many hundreds of such choices are writ in stone. It is not possible to find your way back to “the road not taken.” The “trade-off” has become a sacrifice.

• • •

It's a sacrifice even when you can honestly say, “I have no regrets. It was the best move I ever made.”

“No regret” does not necessarily mean “no pain.” Choices come with different price tags. Sometimes the choice is so painful we are deeply unwilling to make the sacrifice of either side. We are caught between "a rock and hard place". But we are forced to act. How did Sophie choose between her two children? Choose the one that is soonest mended? But it is obscene to say that choosing her son rather than her daughter is something that can be "mended".

• • •

Sacrifice has negative connotations. But what if we turned the looking glass around and saw sacrifice as positive? What if we looked at the events of our week and tallied the number of “positive” sacrifices we made? A student, for instance, might find:

On Monday I studied and sacrificed a dorm talk session.

On Tuesday I asked a question in class and sacrificed my

precious anonymity with that professor. On Wednesday I

phoned my sister in the hospital and sacrificed the pleasure

I'd taken in feeling guilty for not being a thousand miles

closer. On Thursday I went out with some friends and

sacrificed the need to do research for a term paper. On

Friday I ---

When the choice involves an event rather than a shift in attitude, one can never go back. Now your friends know you do care about your work; you are now known to your professor and will not be anonymous again; you have bridged that distance to your sister and will do so again.

A businessman, a mother, an advocate lawyer for the poor, a doctor, a patient in a nursing home, an MTV star --each one could add up their sacrifices and realize how many choices they were making. Perhaps we would find more "sacrifices" like these made life more interesting --or even more successful. Perhaps we would connect in a whole new way to the reasons for our initial choice (always going for the dorm talk session, never speaking up in class, choosing not to interact with my sister, always choosing to be with friends rather than studying.)

Nevertheless, sacrifice involves difficulty at best and long-term pain at worst. The issues raised here have no solution except moment by moment and person by person.

• • •

Kipling wrote, “And what should they know of England who only England know?”

If you only know England you don't know England because without comparison there is no knowledge. How is a fish to describe the bliss and dangers of water until it is caught in a net and tossed in the air? To make any single move changes a situation. What is sacrificed? Contented ignorance? A situation that “works for me”?

"She was glad to have married him. He, too, came from

strawberry farmers. He was good with the plants and knew

which runners to cut. His hands, like hers, were berry

stained in the summer months. The red fruit mingled with

his skin and scented it. She knew that in part because of his

smell she wanted to tie her life to his; it was something she

understood in her nose, finally, as odd as that might seem

to others. And she knew that Kabuo wanted what she

wanted, a San Piedro strawberry farm. That was all, there

was nothing more than that, they wanted their farm and

closeness at hand of the people they loved and the scent of

strawberries outside their window. There were girls

Hatsue's age she knew very well who felt certain their

happiness was something other, who wanted to go

to Seattle or Los Angeles. They could not say in any precise

way exactly what it was they sought in the city, only that

they wanted to go there. It was something Hatsue herself had

once felt but had since emerged from as if from a

dream, discovering the truth of her private nature: it was in

her to have the composure and tranquility of an island

strawberry farmer. She knew in her bones what she wanted,

and she knew why she wanted it, too. She understood the

happiness of a place where the work was clear and there

were fields she could enter into with a man she loved

purposefully. And this was what Kabuo felt too, and what

he wanted from life. And so they made plans together".

"Snow Falling On Cedars" by David Guterson, (First Vintage

Contemporaries Edition, October 1995 p.89-90)

But one thing well chosen does not mean reprieve from further choice. Nor does it confer an exemption from pain.

It is worth considering, and indeed it has been so taught, that suffering arising from the circumstances of a clear choice, an appropriate commitment, is the very thing that creates a thoughtful and reliable adult.

Many choices have been made in the above quotation, many are still being made. All involve sacrifice and risk. Hatsue sees the “other side”, the q. position, but knows what she wants, and knows what she wants is not what others want. Her life is a happy sacrifice of the other side. Is it made happier because she knew about the other side and rejected it? Will she have no regrets when she is old --even if things don't turn out so well?

All choice brings new situations in which further choices present themselves. Here are the results of Hatsue’s choices, some of them the result of her husband’s own nature, some the result of history catching them and laying waste their plans:

"There was a place in him she could not reach where he

made his choices in solitude, and this made her not only

uneasy about him but afraid for their future too. Her life

was joined to his now, and it seemed to her that every

corner of his soul should be opened to hers because of this.

It was the war, she persistently told herself, it was the

prison of camp life, the pressures of the times, their exile

from home, that explained his distance. Many men were

going off to the war against the wishes of women, a lot of

them leaving the camp each day, droves of young men

going. She told herself she must endure it in the way her

mother and Kabuo's mother counseled her and not struggle

against those larger forces that could not be struggled

against. She was in the stream of history now, as her

mother before her had been. She must travel it easily or her

own heart would devour her and she would not endure the

war unwounded, as she still hoped to do.

"Snow Falling On Cedars" by David Guterson (First Vintage

Contemporaries Edition, October 1995 p.92-93)

Human choices are made and judged on the six-pointed map. You make the choice, you are the one who judges it, (that is unless the choice affects others).

The map is the structure of equobenity.

However, the T. and the g. positions on the map can't be chosen. They merely report on how well or how badly you have chosen. They are the thermometer, you produce the fever. Human choice takes place on only one part of the map: the broad, rectangular field of choice whose boundaries are indicated by four locations, e.,q.,u.and o.

The structure also produces two triangles.

and

The top triangle is the one to live in, the bottom is the one to mend or avoid.

Here are four of Hatsue’s equobenities. All four are then placed on the structure

Summaries:

e. consider and make up your mind alone, in your own heart

q. to share with others all questions and the choices that must be made

e. closeness to a spouse

shared intimacies

q. necessary separation between any two individuals, including a beloved spouse

e. resist, struggle

q. accept, endure

e. seek and find peace

q. maintain a high level of intensity and search

The same four equobenities when placed on the structure:

Hatsue's first equobenity:

e.to consider and make up your mind alone, in your own heart

Benefits:

1.you can be true to your own deepest hopes and needs

2.you can take all the time you need

etc.

q. to share with others all questions and the choices that must be made

Benefits:

1.you gain perspective on the situation

2.you learn about the person with whom you are sharing

3.you become closer to him or you move away

etc.

the etc. is always necessary

most people have something to add

to everything

not to be able to do so leaves the situation to others

(that's appropriate also)

u.to always consider and make up your mind alone, never share questions and concerns, results in:

1. loss of perspective

2. over evaluation of your own opinions

3. automatic rejection of another perspective

4. you become a growly ermit type of person

etc.

o. to always share your questions and concerns, never consider and make up your mind alone, results in:

1. danger of paying so much attention to other’s opinions that you lose touch with what you yourself most desire

2. loss of self

etc.

• • •

The first and second of Hatsue’s equobenities are only different in subtle ways. Equobenity allows for very fine tuning, for very fine cohesion to the exact situation of the individual involved. These might not be the equobenities she herself would identify.

Hatsue's second equobenity is:

e. closeness to a spouse, shared intimacies

Benefits:

1. deepening of trust

2. deepening of love

3. becoming a loving person

4. increased capacity for life

etc.

q. necessary separation between any two individuals, including a beloved spouse

Benefits:

1. maintenance of the sense of one’s authentic self

2. strengthening one’s authentic self

3. loving perspective that is important to the spouse

etc.

The form of this map forces one to think about the situation as it exists. But as no one, sometimes especially ourselves, understands all the consequences of any of the four positions, two spaces are left for further insights and the “etc.” leaves room always, for further additions.

. always closeness, never separation,

results in:

1.danger of losing one’s sense of the authentic self

2. failure to quite grow up

etc.

o. always separation, never closeness,

results in:

1. failure to develop the capacity for intimacy

2. danger of becoming a loner

etc.

• • •

Third of Hatsue's equobenities:

e. resist, struggle

Benefits:

1. you may win

2. you are strengthened

etc.

q. accept, endure

Benefits:

1. you may survive

2. you are strengthened

etc.

u. to only resist never accept, results in:

1.defeat somewhere along the line

2. distances you from the quieter things of life

etc.

o. to only accept never resist, results in:

1. your becoming a wimp

2. loss of what you care for

etc.

• • •

Fourth of Hatsue equobenities:

e. seek and find peace

Benefits:

1.peace, contentment

2. achievement of goal

etc.

q. maintain a high level of intensity and search

Benefits:

1.excitement and challenge to exceed yourself

2.great networking possilities

3. alienation of self

etc.

The form of this map forces one to think about the situation as it exists. But as no one, sometimes especially ourselves, understands all the consequences of any of the four positions, so two spaces are left for further insights and the “etc.” leaves room always, for further additions

u. to only seek and find peace, to never maintain a high level of intensity and search, results in:

1. failure to exercise all aspects of the innate self

2. you are useless in the pressures of decision making

etc.

o. to only maintain a high level of intensity and

search, never to seek and find peace, results in:

1. failure to exercise all aspects of the self

2. people find you exhausting

etc.

• • •

In order to know the time a form is needed. There is the reliable rising and setting of the sun and there is the reliable alternation of night and day. But while both are glorious as subjects for poetry both are too rough to be useful as indicators of time's hours and minutes. A sundial is a finer instrument than dawn and a sundial is a finer instrument than Stonehenge but while a clock is finer than a sundial and a stopwatch finer than a clock, neither are good enough when the horses are coming in at Belmont and three of them are neck and neck. Today, even a stopwatch won't be fine enough.

The points on the equobenity map make a kind of clock --though with a. difference. Equobenity is always wound up and requires neither batteries or electricity. Time does always moves forward and can't be rewound. But unlike a clock, the relationships that take place on its simple face are always changing.

In order to inform you of what is going on around you, within you, in personal relations, in community life, in national and international life, the the structure of equobenity, the clock, is always present both in the particular and on its structure.

If you wish to see with perspective, and if you wish quickly to gauge risks and possibilities, if you wish to understand how very evil you can become and how very extraordinary and miraculous you actually are, you need a finer form on which to observe and make distinctions than the hit-or-miss value of simple precepts.

One may never recover from the pain of sacrifice. But if the necessary choice has been done in full consciousness we are at least spared the gnawing presence of guilt and second guessing. We won’t spend the rest of our life in a time warp. Which is a great benefit as time is the most non-renewable resource we have.

• • •

Free Will

Context: Psychological difficulties follow us even into an ashram. And strange as it may seem, it is actually very hard to give up that which makes us miserable, unhappy, and incomplete. What is in us that makes us need to be miserable? Luckily, attitude is never set in stone.

Equobenity:

e. What's done's done. I can't do anything about it; I need to learn to live with it.

q. The effect of what's done can be undone, slowly, with tender understanding, forgiveness, and the courage to make changes

Notes from an ashram:

" 'Remember what our Guru says –be a scientist of your own spiritual experience. You're not here as a tourist or a journalist, you're here as a seeker. So explore it.'

" 'So you're not letting me off the hook?'

" 'You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That's the divine contract of a little something we call free will.' "

"Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for

everything across Italy, India and Indonesia"

by Elizabeth Gilbert [Viking Penguin,

a member of Penguin Books; paperback 2006; page 164]

When we find ourselves living through a situation over which we have lost forever some essential choice, there still remains the hundreds of other situations in which we do, always, exercise choice --these choices cannot be lost. They are forever present. We can exercise our free will to love --at any time. We are always free to be appreciative, to be generous, to at least try to forgive.

Where There Is No Choice

Transcendence and garbage

the T. and the g. positions on the equobenity structure

the relationship of time to the T. and the g.

unlike e. and q., the T. and the g. position cannot be chosen

Furthermore:

1 plus 1= 1

e.& q.=T.

One action, one attitude, complete in itself,

whole

when abandoned for its opposite whole,

also complete in itself,

back and forth between them,

in the perspective of time,

prove to be one other

whole thing,

a new thing, a product of that action, that attitude.

This applies to a single person or to any collective of people.

There can be one equobenity creating the T.

or it can be far more complex,

a creative outcome where many equobenities must be chosen appropriately

before the desired T. appears

• • •

The Transcendence, The T. Position On The Map

The transcendence is created whenever two opposing things, are chosen alternatively and appropriately. Transcendence can't be chosen. Only actions create "the new thing". It can be small, familiar and temporal; it can be life changing and permanent; it can be brought into being by an individual or by a collective of any size.

• • •

Context: The review of a biography: "She's written a succinct and yet roomy book, one that moves along with novelistic buoyancy and grace. She gets the facts-to-fancy ration, always a difficult one for a biographer to weigh, exactly right."

(Dwight Garner in Books of the Times reviewing Frances Wilson's biography of William Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, "The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth" ( Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009, 316 pages)

Equobenities:

These are the two equobenities at work in this quote. Here is one as laid out on equobenity's structure:

a readable, excellent

book

e. succinct, gets right to the point

Benefits:

1. story keeps moving

2. details are relevant

etc.

q. roomy, does not stint on details, color etc.

Benefits::

1. characters are well-rounded

2. setting, characters are engaging

etc.

as always, it is necessary just here

to say how crucial it is in the search for what is true

to have extra slots and the etc.

our world is replete with as many valid responses

as there are people with personal experiences

u. always succinct, never roomy, results in:

1. colorless facts

2. dry

3. reader remains unengaged

etc.

o. always roomy, never succinct, results in:

1. pillowed with irrelevancies

2. reader is bored

etc.

• • •

The actions that takes place between the e. and the q., of any equobenity, are actions of a person's or many peoples choice. T. and g. show up on the structure of their own accord.

One can aim for perfection, one can do everything possible to achieve it, but it can't be chosen in the way that you can choose one plastic tub and not another. Your only control is between e. and q. and this takes time. It takes time to find out if your actions have been chosen well or poorly, if you're up there with a T. or headed down toward the g.. Only with time comes perspective and a knowledge of balance maintained.

It takes time to go upstairs and downstairs as you do your daily errands.

It takes time to do errands but also find time to do only as you choose.

It takes time to do only as you choose and do work for others.

It takes time to do work locally and be aware of the wider society.

It takes time to work for the wider society and not neglect what is small.

There will come a time when you look back, see you how much you have done, see there have been changes for the better, in you yourself, in your own family, in your own community and, if you have gone this far, in the wider society. Think of the Hillary Clintons of this world, the John Gilbert Winants, or the man or woman in your own community to whom everyone goes to for advice, for a recommendation, to ask h/im to go on a board of directors.

Unimaginable to think of the number of pairs, of equobenities Nelson Mandela encountered, from each of which he made a choice. Once he was certain he was e. not going to give up, that he was going to persist, did his choices become any easier? The fact that he had given himself a solid ground where he had taken a stand, chosen his road and his destination -did this perhaps relieve him of some of the anguish in later choices?

Was he perhaps luckier than the rest of us in that his cause was clear and unarguably good: rid South Africa of apartheid, create a democracy of equality of opportunity between all people?

Could we emulate Mandela? Or are we the hero who either doesn't recognize a challenge or one who refuses it?

• • •

Here are the two elements required to make a certain kind of garden, not a formal or as the author says, "a contrived garden," but a natural, easy-care and harmonious garden.

Context: How to design and create a garden

Equobenity: with its T. position:

a harmonious,

natural garden

e. the designer, the gardene

q. the space, the plants

"Each plant must contribute actively to the overall design, but it must do so on its own terms. Asking plants to do what they do best eliminates a lot of the control-oriented chores that are built into the great majority of traditional gardens. ... When you work with your plants, rather than trying to bend them to your will, the result is simply beautiful. Designs that are based on what plants do best look natural, rather than contrived.... Gardens made like this are cooperative endeavors where nature and gardeners play a part."

Ann Lovejoy, "Organic Garden Design School; A Guide to Creating Your Own Beautiful, Easy-Care Garden" (Rodale Books, distributed in the book trade by St. Martin's Press; 2001; page 1)

A great symphony orchestra is more complicated. It requires the composer as designer and it's ok if he is dead; it requires the space, the conductor and players (those "plants doing what they do best"). The T. position is the music itself, as heard, much as the garden itself is the T. position.

it takes both e. and q.

to have what we all take for granted:

music

e. matter, existing, objects, persons

q. spirit, invisible, untouchable

• • •

Context: The cosmos, mathematics, physics etc.

Equobenity and its T. position:

cosmos: space and time

"a kind of union" takes place

between e. and q.

e. space

q. time

"Minkowski, a Gottingen mathematician of exceptional brilliance, first presented a reworking of the Lorentz and Einstein equations into tensor form in an address to a scientific congress in Cologne in September 1908, where he boldly announced, 'From this hour on, space as such and time as such must fade away into shadow, and only a kind of union of the two will maintain its reality.' "

Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity; edited by Martin J. Klein, translated by Doctor Anna Beck (George Braziller, 171 Madison Ave, NY, NY 10016, published in association with the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; 1996; page 18)

When you listen to great music, does the composer leave the forefront of your mind but the conductor and musicians enhance the music's pleasure?

When you are in a wonderful garden, does the designer "fade away into shadow" but the plants enhance your pleasure? (There are many transcendent gardens composed of grass and water, or walls and steps.)

Once you have surely gained the reality of the T. position, all the various struggles of how you achieved this place -your work between e.s and q.s- "fades away into shadow."

• • •

Context:: A young man setting forth.

Equobenity and the T. position:

the right reliance

on first one and then on the other

will set you up for a wonderful life

e. heart

q. head

Here is a phrase from a poem by Andrew Motion:

"---sees only his young self setting out, complete with a plan that matches his delirious heart to his meticulous brain."

"The Death of Francesco Borromini" by Andrew Motion (contemporary English poet)

• • •

Context: How one gets to be a great jazz performer

Equobenity and the T. position::

know when training should cease

and improvisation begin

e. training

q. improvising

" 'In business as in jazz, the tension between training and improvisation can result in great new work,' says John Kao, the innovation adviser (and pianist)."

Sentence accompanying a photograph by Peter DaSilva of John Kao, Sunday Business, The New York Times, January 29, 2012; front page

• • •

Context: Deep in the heart of Muslim Pakistan, a young American idealist wants to build schools. Why does he think he will be trusted?

Equobenity and the T. position:

knowing that both e. and q. can be

equally true provides

flexibility in personal assessments of people

even when two people are vastly different

e. don't judge a book by its cover

q. Camus: "every man is responsible for his own face."

Here is the learned Muslim who jumped into the q. position and took a chance.

" ' There are certain Europeans who come to Pakistan determined to tear Islam down, ' Syed Abbas says. 'And I was worried, at first, that Dr. Greg was one of them. But I looked into his heart that day at the petrol pump and I saw him for what he is –an infidel, but a noble man nonetheless, who dedicates his life to the education of children. I decided on the spot to help him in any way I could.' "

"Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time," by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Viking, published by the Penguin Group, 2006; hardcover; page 191)

• • •

"The best feelings of our nature" employ the pairs of opposites, the equobenities, as easily, as naturally as a pianist goes from a minor key to a major, from the white keys to the black keys, from waltz time to ragtime.

Yes, we have heard this particular piece many times. But not in this context, not in just this way, with these musicians, in this space, with these friends. Right now it is "the new thing," the transcendent.

"[Helen] Vendler believes, like Wordsworth in his first 'Essay upon Epitaphs,' that 'the best feelings of our nature' are those which, 'though they seem opposite to each other, have another and a finer connection than that of contrast.' It is a connection, as Wordsworth says, 'formed through the subtle progress by which, both in the natural and moral world, qualities pass insensibly into their contraries, and things revolve upon each other." (italics EE)

New York Review of Books, 11/28/96, Denis Donoghue reviewing three books by Helen Vendler

• • •

About the g. position, a personal reflection

It has taken until now, January 2014, to decide that like T., the g. cannot be chosen. There are many degrees of descent into the enjoyable fixity of an impoverished mode. And there are many reasons for a person to choose one of these degrees and hole up there: the responsibility to make choices becomes limited, sometimes very limited. You get a good deal of attention because people have to deal with you, work around you, jump over you to find someone better, escape you or plot to escape you. For someone who enjoys all this exercise of negative power, to arrive some ways down into an impoverished mode, is enough. For many it's the greatest pleasure they've ever had.

The g. position is down beyond all such involvement. It's a cold, merely calculating place in which to arrive. The soul has already been lost. When the flesh of such a person is buried, no flame of an ardent soul will be left to beckon in the night air when the angel is heard who sweeps the dark collecting flames for Paradise. There is no ardent soul left to flame. And if you don't believe in angels and Paradise, you certainly will be familiar with the damp yellowing of a still-standing, still-gorging dead soul.

I think people choose varying degrees of varying numbers and types of impoverished modes. But I think they don't choose to become dead souls. There would be no "enjoyment in the exercise of negative power." There'd be no enjoyment of any kind.

Like the T. position, the g. comes of its own accord. It is merely a report on how you have spent your time on the great field of choice.

No Choice

Situations: No One Has Choice

Transcendent or T

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