16 VII 2002 - 00:04 - verba23

Now for step two of Alchera option number four... Here's the deal (and this will sound corny, but it's all in good fun): You're on the Titanic, and you have four suitcases with you. Respectively, your suitcases are carrying the four things you've chosen. You're down in the ballroom eating dinner with those you've met and those who came with you, listening to some nice orchestral music, when the captain comes down to make an announcement. He says the boat has hit an iceberg and everyone needs to come up on deck with their four suitcases. "Do not panic," he says, "Everything is under control. We need to board the small boats here, just in case, and get to safety. Due to the sizes of the boats, there isn't enough room for you and all of your suitcases, so I regret to inform you that you need to choose the least important suitcase and throw it overboard."

What I need you to do now is re-post the three most important things in your life, and noting beneath that list the item you chose to throw overboard. Nothing more than that, please (i.e., do not explain why you've chosen which case to throw overboard).

So here we go, copy and paste:

I do not walk in this world so much as I walk in spite of it. This, a reflection of my tendency to trip into everything and keep my weight balanced just before the balls of my feet, ready to spring into flight from the man who will be my undoing, puts everything else in my life after it.

What then are the four three things most important to me in my life? At my tender age, it is not the material things or so much the ones of daily ritual which my mind wears smooth. Rather, they can be expressed as tasks and as categories, thus.

First, and I suspect most likely to endure (along with the next), is the concept of language, and my ability to use it in all its forms -- in my ability to write, to speak, to read, and more generally to comprehend. The thought is sublime that through this vehicle I may communicate with the great minds of this and previous ages. As long as I am able to speak, as long as I remain able to learn a language, I am not unmanned, I remain in full possession of my faculties, I am human.

Second, and again likely permanent, is the concept of music, but in this case of a very specific sort: music of the European tradition from about 1200 to the present day, that music commonly known as 'classical' although in truth, the term is used better to describe the music of the period 1750-1800. Music is a force in my life, both as I perform it and as I listen to it; as long as it is with me, as long as I can call readily to mind great pieces and play them also, I am human, with the capacity to feel, with the capacity to touch the minds of the men who wrote the music. Just as language is the final test of my reason, music is the final test of my emotion.

Third is a temporary task, but no less important for the fact that it is transitory: here sits the task of discovering my identity, or the question: who am I? Under this, the search for and shaping of a God, who slowly begins to take shape in my mind; under this, the shaping of a belief system, of values, of what I hold most dear to my heart. Perhaps I cheat, being told to name four and naming identity-group and identity-personal as two separate concepts; surely they are closely bound. They are, but I remain convinced that the two are different tasks, difficult for me in different ways. And from this last comes my preoccupation with religion and God and just what his nature might be.

I eliminated the discovery of my identity as it relates to the group (family, culture, other sexual beings) but retained the discovery of my personal identity. Should've been redundant and included sexuality in both (since different things are implied by each), but ah well. I'll have to rely on you, dear ones, to fill that one in.

We started here
and lost more along the way:
one

and then there was onlyone