Something there is that loves a riddle.

Something about an enigma draws us. Why do we instinctively turn towards a puzzle, and not away?

I think of Bob Dylan's cryptic rhyming, and I marvel at the popularity it had once-upon-a-time; but I don't marvel because I'm surprised. I could be fascinated by his enigmas too, if I didn't know they meant nothing. Somehow people are intrigued by what they don't understand.

Maybe that's why God leaves a bit of mystery in religion. He seems to like a paradox; but maybe that's for our sake. G. K. Chesterton said that mystery was healthy--Man should have something he doesn't understand--or something he can't.

I like that thought: we're hard-wired to love a mystery. For one thing, it excuses all the mystery novels I read. For another, it explains my fascination with hieroglyphics, and ancient languages, and greek myths and miracles.

It also explains Man's interest in the unknown. Why did the Greeks invent the Pantheonic gods? Who set up Stonehenge, and why? Who were the Druids?

I think our thirst for mystery is a gift from God--it turns our thoughts to the spirit world. If Man denies the divine, he does so only through deliberate disregard of his innate knowledge that it exists. Man searches for the divine not because he knows it isn't there, but because he knows it is.

The proof of God's existence is our desire for mystery. We look for it in myths and riddles, but we find it in Him.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, people:

Do you prefer my cognitive posts...or those other short things I post?


(yes, I know that "thing" isn't a word that should be in anyone's vocabulary after the age of 6)

Yes, I'll be posting more "real" posts soon--you can stop picketing in front of my house now.

G. K. Chesterton on the subject of Cheese:

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of [a] nursery rhyme...[e]xcept Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese.

Yet it has every quality which we require in an exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to breeze and seas (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say Cheese it! or even Quite the cheese.

I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded...to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get a great many things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind.

The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits.

Biscuits - to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits - to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread!

I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates.

Amen!

And thanks to my friend Pieter, for bringing Chesterton and Cheese to my attention a few years back!

I saw an old man on inline-skates today. It made me smile--he moved with such a young confidence. When I am an old lady, I will skate often in the park, and drive a yellow convertible, and wear high-top sneakers. I want to make people smile too.

I'm having a friendless day. Maybe I'll move to wildest Africa. Or to the frozen wasteland of Siberia--a wasteland could be a very attractive place right now.

One of the few Stephen Crane poems I like:


The Wayfarer

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that no one has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

-Stephen Crane

I'm back, but the post I was going to write lost itself in New York. If any of you are New York natives, keep an eye out for my lost brainchild. And if you should come across the poor thing wandering cloud-like over hill and vale, please send it my way.