A-12

'The rule of specialists and experts has several drawbacks. They tend to grow rather crazy and attach a quasi-religious importance to their specialized conclusions'.
---K. Clark, Moments of Vision.

From Lesley Chamberlain:

He [Herzen] despised the dullness of carefully ordered, secure lives..."no-one rejects the settled life"...the stylish, non-specialized amateur, vs the provincial with his narrow certainties..."character nurtured itself in the stream of the world"..a freedom from absorption in the theoretical, abstract world of the mind, from set-thinking, nature, governments...

The ability to oppose mechanism: in life, in thought.

"That I am will always be for me higher than I know"

strange how the summer term always seems to end in A-12. the graduating class, on their way. less concern, now, with what they'll end up doing. but it's always fascinating to enter into a reverie whereby you imagine each one in ten years time. Of course, in that imaginary world you are still the same age, still invisible, looking at them as you do now-the way one can watch a fire for ever- as they scribble down their answers to some obtuse questions....

this scene is repeated, as if life could go on for ever. is it possible to imagine discontinuity? or would one prefer to heap up more years of a meaningless life rather than 'think' about the inevitable? if thought emerges from within life then cannot life assert itself once again?

there are no "types", just individuals with their quirky traits, tell-tale features. a shoulder blade here, a twinkle in an eye there, a slouching gait, lazy shuffling steps, the odd inquisitive mind (but rare).

what will be remembered? very little, you guess. which is probably always the way, and perhaps not such a bad thing after all. many have and come and gone before; many will do so in the future. from a distance chance is fate. what does it hold in store? not that you really care. that would be ridiculous. but it's always one of those eerie moments that opens onto the utterly mysterious.

whatever it was, it doesn't arrive.
---The Apartments.