This is the experiment

I have often observed, to my wonder and delight, that my handwriting changes in very subtle ways depending on the kind of pen I am using: Whether it is an inkpen or a ball point, or again whether it is a gel pen or a pencil even. Even within a certain class, say gel pens, my handwriting takes to some kinds and not so much to others. The r's and s's and f's get their own flair and pointed intentions with the right kind of pen.
So too with us. What we are is intricately bound up with whom we are around, where we are, what we give and what we receive. There, some style of ours is taken up and immortalized by someone, here an intention that we made is covered over and reinvoked at a different time, thereby lending this intention a new, hitherto unanticipated meaning, and some times a proposal of ours is rejected initally but sharpened into a more disciplined, self-conscious command by the other, and at other times what we offer is completely overlooked or rejected by the world. What we end up inscribing on the tablet of life seems to depend entirely on the surface of the tablet itself! This dark uncertainty that belongs inescapably to our lot seems to be a sort of weakness. Nietzsche implies so much when he writes of the German that he "cannot be judged by his actions and [that] as an individual he is still completely hidden even after he has acted." Our actions do not reveal who we are for these actions only manage us to recast us into a new light, which we ourselves were not privy to before. Like a fallen leaf we get whisked away, trampled over, flown across lands at the mercy of uncertain forces and winds, or we remain in some corner withering away and forgotten.
But this injustice that we suffer at the hands of life is also our path to glory and redemption. To be sure, one must limit oneself and possess oneself in a self-contained way. But this self-enclosure is only possible by an occasional will to stupidity, as Nietzsche might say. In the end, by wrapping ourselves with our own skin we deny ourselves the possibility of a new meaning, a re-birth, a future, however dangerous a game one is now playing in choosing to remain in this open uncertainty. It is in this future that our greatness and glory lie. Life's theatre of cruelty is not revealed in that one is fluttering at the mercy of natural forces one cannot gain control over, but in the challenge to repeatedly submit oneself to this flight and fluttering all the while preserving oneself in the act without losing balance. To speak through Nietzsche again: "How much truth can one endure? how much truth can one dare? This is the real measure of value. This is the test. This is the experiment."

The joyful signs!

After the victory is won, one always feels one has expended more energy than was actually required for the task. But strangely, this insight is unavailable when one is actually going through the process, as one always feels pressured to spend as much effort and energy as one did. (The growth of the child or any process of self-overcoming has this peculiar structure of strife and pain).
However, the seemingly excess energy that appears at the end of the process will not have gone to waste. It shows up as the profound joy and power of the conquerer!

Tip of the tongue

It does not have to be this way, but language in many cases emerges as a back-up for instincts that have corrupted. The sure sign of corrupted instincts is that one does not trustfully believe in these instincts anymore. Believing is no mean task; we are all bad believers insofar as we cannot tiptoe on a tightrope without being sucked in by the vertigo of the abysses. To save oneself from the fear of perishing one seeks a cushion, a back-up. Language then emerges as this emergency solution. It acts as the depository reserve, the "savings account," in which one hopes to translate the sublime and fluid language of instincts for the sake of assurance and guarantee.
Writing (book-keeping, journals, etc.) and technological innovations (day-planners, computers) have this interpretation of language guiding their development. Nay, the whole of Western-dialectics develops out of this feeling of vertigo. The root of American capitalism is to be found in words that have rigidified themselves into fixed meanings: a clear sign of disintegrated instincts. No wonder Americans are inclined to "talk about" anything and everything that appears to them as a problem as way of solving these problems. America: the most scholarly culture that has ever been.

Misunderstandings

1. The quality of consistency may be taken to be a symptom of boredom and repetition. Alternatively it may indicate, in some very exceptional cases, the sign of bright awareness and openness to the world. It would be a great injustice to confuse the latter for the former. Who would call the patterns of sun, the sea, the birds and the trees boring?

2. I once said this. But also: to think that thought which is unthinkable, unaccessible to others -- it is the secret strength of the one who marches on without forerunners!

Limits of logic

The world has the character of .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... with the future terms in the chain expressing the reality that takes shape and is created only at that moment (this reality being born out of an indeterminable array of factors). What comes to be, therefore, is the greatest testament to its itself, to reality. It sustains itself in absolute freedom, and is answerable only to itself.
Even the logician has no say in what comes to be, but on the contrary, he adjusts his theory of contradiction depending on what peculiar form reality dishes out. It would be ridiculous for him to say, "reality cannot be that way because my theory forbids it!" since his theory is parasitic on reality and not viceversa. (All the shocks of quantum physics and old age must bear this in mind for insulation). Hence, the best the logician or the phenomenologician can do is to faithfully describe, not predict, reality. But what else is this best description, besides that which repeats or mirrors the sequence of terms? : .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... Granted that this rote repetition can be therepeutic at times (for example, by clearing up one's own confusions about reality (Wittgenstein), or by acting as the seat for the confessions of one's sins), it is still always uninterestingly modest, self-preserving and meek.
If on the other hand, one confused the nature of logic and professed to predict reality, all one would have done is glibly short-circuited reality or generalized it. One's immodest theory then turns to be hopelessly abstract that seeks to grasp the skeleton of reality with pincers after it has sucked up its blood. A great way to counter this abstraction is to use logic against itself: to wit, show that the real terms contradict each other (say, by juxtaposing b and -b) when they are taken out of context (an operation that is needed for all generalizations), in order to, of course, not show the deficiency of reality, but rather that of logic. (It is by this method that Nietzsche effects a releasement of logic into life).
But releasing contradictions into the flow of life: by this are we not taking the basic steps of the creative life itself?