Life in a paragraph.

"I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing through and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think that is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feelings and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?"

John Steinbeck
"East of Eden"

Perhaps this is simplifying things too much, a world of lives and thoughts boiled down to a pair. Or perhaps it's true, when a life is truly looked at, the magnified parts finally scrutinized with a keen eye, things truly do boil down to those two. Good or Evil.

Personally I think Steinbeck has brought out the dramatic side in me. He tends to do that. For the next few days my mind will be filled with the philosophical implications of every moment, every thought, breath and action. Great books do that to me.

This is when I recede inward, after the last page is turned, the last sentence read. A world of words, Steinbeck's canvas splashed with my paint. The outside world fogs over as my eyes go in, reliving and contemplating what I just read. So many people I've just met, new souls. They exist as real as any other soul I've known, perhaps more so. Cal - I don't know if I've ever truly liked a character more, a bird of a similar feather.

In parting...

"Thou mayest rule over sin,' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles - only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are other who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. "Thou mayest, Thous mayest! What glory. It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before."

Timshel.