Throw Yourself Like Seed, Miguel de Unamuno
Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
Sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
That brushes your heel as it turns going by,
The man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.
Now you are only giving food to that final pain
Which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
But to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
Is the work; start there, turn to the work.
Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
Don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
And do not let the past weigh down your motion.
Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
For life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
From your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.
"So any activity a human being or a god might engage
in--music, medicine, or anything else--requires one to take
both these Loves into the fullest possible consideration,
since they will both be there."--Eryximachus, Plato's Symposium
Buffy: "It's just such a Catch 23, ya know?"
Michael: "A what?"
Buffy: "Oh, wait. A Catch 13."
Michael: "Not even close."
Buffy: "Twenty-two?"
Michael: "Yes."
Buffy: "It's just, once the Latin class gets
to where I left off, it's going to go
fast. And I have to be thorough, ya
know; I'm not just going to go over it
all, slapstick."
Michael: "'Slapstick'?"
Buffy: "Ohh: 'slipshod.'"
Michael: [bass laughter] "I was going to say,
'What--you're worried everyone's
going to start throwing pies around
in each other's faces, or what?'"
Michael (to me): "Everyone's going to start
calling you 'The Wit.' And they'll be half right."
Michael (interrupting me when I was delivering my latest story in my characteristic, truncating giddiness): "You have, like, six sentences waiting to be finished!"
