December 16, 2005
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A Wintry Friday Afternoon
Three years ago today in the New York Times:
“The book was Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy, and I was 12 or 13 when I carried it home from
the library one wintry Friday afternoon.I cannot even remember the novel that accompanied it. But I remember
that I was curled up on our beat-up old couch, the one with the huge
embarrassing rip where my older sister would position me to sit
demurely, my dress fanned out over the damage, when her dates arrived.
I was reading Durant’s section on Plato, struggling to understand his
theory of the ideal Forms that lay in inviolable perfection out beyond
the phantasmagoria. (That was the first, and I think the last, time
that I encountered that word.)The Forms are abstract but real, I read, graspable only through the
eyes of the mind, pure reason. And it seemed to me, that dark winter
afternoon as I read, that I was grasping them; that I, a yiddishe
maidel of questionable worth, was seeing with the eyes of my mind
exactly what that ancient Greek philosopher had seen; that just like
him I was out beyond the phantasmagoria, suspended in formal
perfection; that I was out beyond myself, had almost lost all touch
with who I even was, and it was . . . bliss.”– Rebecca Goldstein
Related material:
Davenport’s Express.Update of 6:14 PM EST:
Whistle Stop
For the late John Spencer,
actor on NBC’s “West Wing”– “When was the last time
you went to a meeting?”
– “AA?…. What meeting
could I possibly go to?”
– “Mine.”
