The Eternal Return of the Same

You who read the New York Time's Book Reviews, will have read the review about Julian Young's new book on Friedrich Nietstzche, but even those of you who read it may want to read again one of the gorgeous concepts Nietzsche developed, which was "the eternal return of the same", meaning he believed that every person contains "the need to affirm the value of one's life in every single detail as something to be repeated endlessly through time." I love that. I don't understand it yet, but I'm going to. I have a patient who is a philosopher and this individual will be glad to impart his knowledge to me. And I'll buy the book. But what mostly gets me going is that fabulous phrase...."The eternal return of the same". Sigh. Now, THAT'S language.
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So far today, other than reading the above review, and learning that the earth is slightly FARTHER from the sun in July than it is in December (seasonality is the result, not of orbital geometry, but of Earth's tilt), I overheard this small story:

"I once knew a guy who lived in Sedona and owned a little poodle. And one day the little poodle disappeared. Three days later, the man said the poodle REappeared. "And," my friend the story teller went on, "you know the unusual part of this? The poodle looked exactly the same in the before-disappearing picture as it did in the returned-to-home picture. I mean, they were both the same pictures."

"I couldn't get over it," my friend said. "You've gotta go to Sedona with me, sometime."
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Sometimes Life just happens like that. Before and after, just the same.
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Other than one morning appointment and one late afternoon appointment, I have the whole day off, today. It's a good day for going to the local Walmart and buying two new white lampshades. Even off-white will do, but not the taupe-to-brown- color I've got going in here, now. The living room area needs more light. Speaking of light, my friend Robin made arrangements for my daughter Kelly, her son Morgan and Aleister and me to get a special-just-for-us private tour of a submarine. We had to climb down two long and extremely steep ladders to get to the --I'll call it "the activity space" - the place where the controls are, where the missiles are, (whenever a missile, a sailor brings his bedding and sleeps in that empty space, that space being larger than the usual sleeping accomadations), where the eating-room is. Anyway, because of all the "lit technology", there is always light inside a sub. It would be like living with a zillion little Christmas lights every moment of every night and day, mostly white and red. The sub's captain gave us the tour. He showed us a space in the sub which looked to be a longish black curtain, like an overturned half-limp umbrella. "The space inside this curtain is called 'the cone of stupidity'," said the captain. It provides absolute darkness and absolute darkness tends to disorient all one's senses when you spend months of your life inside a sub."

The cone of stupidity. Now, there's a good bit of lingo, too.

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Finally, speaking (very loosely) of time spent in the sea, my mind once again goes to Aleister....and clams. The last time I took him to a Bainbridge restaurant for clams, Aleister looked across at me and said, butter dripping down his chin, "Mama Kay, what does it mean, 'lazy as a clam'?" "I've never heard that one," I said, "but I've heard 'happy as a clam', what do you make of that?" "That's IT!" Aleister beamed. I MEANT 'happy as a clam', but I said lazy. Although 'lazy' makes more sense than 'happy', because all clams do is lie around someplace, which IS lazy, and how would anybody know if they were happy or not?" He wolfed down a few more clams, then looked at me again and said, "I'll tell you ONE thing, though....I am as happy as a clam when I EAT clams! I LOVE clams! Clams are DEFINITELY the food of my future!"
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