In 1374 the King granted Chaucer a gallon of wine per day for life. A gallon! Per day! For Life! How much could this guy drink? Chaucer lived until 1400. If Chaucer started drinking in, say, mid-1374, by the time of his death he could have consumed 9,313.875 gallons of wine. Good thing they contain antioxidants, but he died anyway.
 
If he didn’t drink by himself—hard to believe he could have penned so many tales under the influence—he certainly could have thrown some great parties, especially since in 1374 Chaucer also started receiving a ten-pound annuity from John of Gaunt. Ah! Fame has its rewards, and those who entertain seem to reap plenty of them.
 
So, in our current age of idol worship aimed at stars and starlets, we are simply continuing a tradition. What is it about entertainment that makes us open our wallets and give our gifts so freely to those who prance across pages and stages?
 
Do we want to pay to live vicariously? If so, isn’t it interesting that those who entertain are, in fact, living vicarious lives, also? Think about it. Storytellers, actors, and actresses present and act in fictional worlds that are not their own everyday lives. And then, having found success in entertaining us, they receive much more than a gallon of wine per day and 10 pounds per year.
 
That we give so much of our income to entertainers is an indication of the importance our brains assign to fiction. Entertainment is a primary drug, and we are willing not only to pay much to acquire it, but we are also willing to submit a kind of obeisance to those who entertain. TV shows, several TV networks, and public awards shows are all testimony to the power entertainment has in the life of the mind.
 
Giving away a gallon of wine per day doesn’t seem to be enough to appease the crowd of likeminded entertainers. Now, they appear to be abandoning entertainment in favor of didactic messages. They appear to want more than drink and dime. Regardless of the level of knowledge or wisdom, those who entertain, having captured the hearts and minds of their fans, now lecture. Some appear to want our minds. 
 
About the time Chaucer had finished gulping all that wine, the Church began entertaining with didactic morality plays--in England in conjunction with the Feast of Corpus Christi. Entertainment was didactic. Starting about the sixteenth century we moved away from such “entertainment” for centuries, but now, apparently, we’re back to listening to those who seem to be telling us stridently how to think rather than giving us something to think about.
 
I don’t begrudge giving modern “Chaucers” wine and pounds for their work, and I don’t begrudge the great wealth we bestow on them for their performances. I don’t even mind morality plays with personifications of virtues and vices. I would just rather prefer to be entertained by entertainers and taught by the wise.     

 “The people are cheerful in disposition, and are light-hearted by nature, and, unlike the plains people, seem to thoroughly appreciate a joke. It is pleasant to hear on the road down to Theriaghat from Cherrapunji, in the early morning the whole hillside resounding with the scraps of song and peals of laughter….”
 
That’s from The Khasis written about a century ago by Major P. R. T. Gurdon, I. A., the Deputy Commissioner Eastern Bengal and Assam Commission.* Gurdon wrote an ethnological study of the people in the Jaintia Hills  of India. Feminists should love them: The society was totally matriarchal until it was influenced by western culture and religion, but it still maintains a thread of the superior position of women.
 
The Khasi tribes occupy about 6,000 square miles from northeastern India to  Bangladesh, from the West Garo Hills through the Khasi Hills, to the Jaintia Hills.** Cherrapunjee (Cherrrapunji, Sohra) south of the East Khasi Hills is one of the wettest places on our planet. In July 1861, for example, more than 30 feet of rain fell, and in the previous twelve-month period, over 86 feet of rain fell. Want a perspective on amount: One inch of rain on one acre is more than 27,000 gallons of water. Eighty-six feet equals more than 1,000 inches, so 1,000 X 27,000 = 27,000,000 gallons of water per acre or 40 Olympic size swimming pools. Picture that in your neighborhood. Picture your neighbors under the deluge of millions of gallons of water per acre. Happy campers? Probably not.  
 
Why should I mention the rain? Listen to the people around you when rain dominates the weather for a few days. Back to what Gurdon wrote: the Khasis are generally inclined to express and appreciate humor. The rain doesn’t seem to take away their laughter.  
 
Think of the environmental influences of mood on your neighbors (I’m assuming that your own mood is not the product of external influences of place and that you can look objectively at the emotional states of others). The people in one of the rainiest places on the planet appear to have a humor not subject to the influence of weather.
 
About to experience a hot humid day? About to experience a continued cold spell? About to experience incessant rain for a week?
 
How do you feel?
 
*
Project Gutenberg, 12786-8.txt or 12786-8.zip
https://ia600503.us.archive.org/0/items/thekhasis12786gut/12786-8.txt
 
**
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=map+of+khasi+tribes&id=88FB6AF853299B5769A9D1294C3CDF54B447EB39&FORM=IQFRBA

Eighteenth-nineteenth century Irish politician Henry Grattan declared, “At twenty years of ago the will reigns, at thirty the wit, at forty the judgment.” That seems insightful enough to warrant a bit of discussion.
 
“Will,” in Grattan’s sense, might have meant “desire,” “impulse,” “want.” Impetuousness is the mode of existence for many at twenty. Want anecdotal evidence? Follow college students around on spring break. See it; do it. Crave it; experience it. Tempted by it; risk it. So, we read annually about students who took chances that resulted in their demise, in pregnancies, or in the early stages of some addiction.
 
By thirty, some acquire sufficient knowledge and experience to live by cleverness. The “wit” is as much self-aggrandizing planning as it is the beginnings of insight.  Thirty is a good age for proving oneself, of making a name for oneself. At forty, two kinds of judgment begin to set. One is the prudence that burgeoning wisdom begets. The other is the fixation of belief and categorization of behavior and ideas that leads to bias or closed mindedness. For some, forty approaches the era of the “old dog,” you know, the one that can’t learn new tricks. Forty fixes philosophy and slanted interpretation.
 
Are any of us living examples of Grattan’s nineteenth century psychology and political philosophy? Did we ever make mistakes borne of impetuousness? Did we ever act out of vanity? Have we bound ourselves to fixed ideas on which we base our judgments? 

In the opening lines of Homer’s The Odyssey, the central character Odysseus (Ulysses) is described as being “so ready at need.” The apt description derives from the clever and determined way Odysseus escapes dangers and solves problems.
 
The story of Odysseus’ ten-year return voyage after the fall of Troy has no shortage of obstacles for him to overcome, including some foolish acts by those in whom he places his trust, the warriors who fought with him at Troy. Throughout the epic, however, he keeps his eye on his ultimate goal to return to reclaim his former life.
 
Keeping an eye on a distant goal while one faces numerous obstacles is the challenge each of us faces. As we hear (or say), “Life gets in the way.” Daily tasks, harsh realities, and our own follies are distractions.
 
Odysseus doesn’t have an easy time achieving his goal. He has to cross open seas. That means he doesn’t have a road, some sort of Appian Way to travel, a path with clear signs, such as “Ithaca --> 100,000 stadia.”
 
Are you on open waters with no signs or on a specific, well-marked path? The route might be more challenging on the former than on the latter, but to reach your distant goal on either you would be wise to be “so ready at need.”  

Neochrome. Sounds shiny. For most of us the term might conjure some new product advertised at length on an infomercial on late-night TV. Picture some fast-talking guy with caffeine-induced enthusiasm explaining how “Neochrome” will change your life. “No longer will you have to look at dull surfaces. It shines plastic. It shines metal. It even shines dull corduroy and old Elvis lampshades.”
 
“Gasp!” the studio audience reacts. Their lives are about to be changed forever, and for only $19.99 plus shipping, handling, and upgrading to “Advanced Neochrome” that comes with a 99-year warranty and a “satisfaction guaranteed or your money back” pledge legal in any court in any country except North Korea.
 
Sorry. No such product here. You’ll need to find some other way of cleaning your Elvis lampshade. Neochrome is a protein found in mosses and ferns, but not in other plants. It has a specific function. It enables these plants to survive and flourish in the low-light conditions of a forest floor. Neochrome enables phototropism and chloroplast movement under red light whereas just about every plant you have every seen uses blue light for these two processes.
 
Strange. Mosses and ferns don’t seem to be closely related. Mosses are Bryophytes and ferns are non-Bryophytes embryophyta.* On the tree of life mosses seem to be a dead end. No other group seems to have arisen from them. Evolution seems to have said, “I like what I see. They can do well on their own, and they need nothing beyond what they are. Apparently, I stumbled on the perfect plant, one that needs no further adaptation.” The line of ferns is a bit more complicated, running from those early non-Bryophytes through Tracheophtyes, Eutracheophytes, Euphyllophytes, Pteridophtyes and Monilophytes and Lignophytes, and, well, on down to the different species of ferns that exist today.
 
Again, strange. How did both the ferns and the mosses, which have seemingly little in common, evolve the same kind of protein to help them thrive in low light? Some have argued for a transfer via viruses or bacteria. You know, some early fern was minding its business when something happened akin to bird or swine flu or HIV. The protein jumped from one species to another, but in the case of ferns became a beneficial intruder. Others** argue that neochromes, being “monophyletic,” have arisen independently at least twice in the history of plants, and mosses and ferns (and hornworts?) have been the fortunate recipients of such independent evolution.
 
“So,” you ask, “what’s the point? I’m not a botanist, but I do have a fern because it is easier to care for than a dog.”
 
The point lies in the independent evolution of a trait that enables two different groups to survive in the same harsh (low-light) environment. Pretty much like the separate groups through history that have become the forces of night and darkness, the vandals, criminals, and terrorists that seem to thrive in places others shun. Is there a lateral transfer of a gene for evil in unrelated groups? Think of what has occurred. Different groups in different countries in different times, all seemingly unrelated, have taken refuge in low light. There doesn’t have to be a mechanism of lateral transfer. Similar forms of evil appear to evolve separately with no common ancestor to pass on the trait for living in semi-light, much like the ability that neochrome gives to mosses and ferns.
 
If the independent evolution of evil is a mechanism of life, then we will always have the potential for evil. If evil evolves as a matter of transfer, then there’s hope that we can someday make its carrier a dead end. Next time you see ferns or some moss, ask yourself about the origin of any evil or evil group.    
 
 
* Non-Bryophytes embryophyta also include the hornworts, a branch of plant life that long ago (Early Cretaceous?) separated from the fern lineage. Neochrome could have evolved separately in hornworts and then jumped somehow into ferns.
 
 
** Suetsugu, Noriyuki, et. al., A chimeric photoreceptor gene, NEOCHROME, has arisen twice during plant evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 102, no. 38, 13705-13709, doi: 10:1073/phas.0504734102 at PNAS online http://www.pnas.org/content/102/38/13705.full

Remember the famous lines from A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens?

     "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

We have a parallel, our own irony. We live in an Age of Guilt and Innocence.
 
On one hand, ours is an era of victimization spiraling ever narrower into this or that group. You might ask if there could ever be a stopping point, some non-occurrence of offended segment of society. As yet, such a point has not been reached, and the downward ever-narrowing spiral continues. Smaller and smaller groups become victims. The narrowest point of the spiral of guilt is the individual who is offended by what some stranger did or said even when the act or word might have been unintentional or aimed at another target. We live in an age of peripheral verbal damage. In this era of victimization guilt is placed by ascription.
 
On the other hand, ironically and in a Dickensian parallel, all the while guilt for this or that perceived offense spirals ever narrower, another movement parallels in a seemingly unending and widening spiral that dissipates into guiltlessness. No one can be guilty because the spiral of guiltlessness includes an enveloping culture or society. No one can be responsible when everyone is. It’s a matter of social pressure or influence. If guilt is ascribed, then it doesn’t originate from within the individual. There’s no inherent compunction.  
 
One spiral designates increasing guilt; the other, widening one designates decreasing responsibility. The difference lies merely on which spiral one envisions: Are you victim by virtue of narrowness? Then you ascribe. Are you guiltless? Then you belong to the widest group.
 
We live in a society where intention, that unseen force that defines responsibility, is inferred by victims and disavowed by perpetrators. The formal law is clear on the matter: Actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea. Victim? Then intention is clear. Guiltless? The offense was unintended. The blame-the-society group might argue that no one can be held personally responsible when everyone in the largest group is guilty. The smallest group, by contrast suffers from the insensitivity of the largest one.
 
So, our age has its own best and worst. The superlatives rule in general. Comparative modifiers are relegated to individuals. The world as a whole is superlative for both the victims (the smallest groups) and the guiltless (the largest groups). Will there ever be a time without ascription of guilt for perceived offenses? Will there ever be a time without assumed innocence by immersion in an encompassing group?
 
The debating will continue. Here it is in general:
 
“You can’t use this word because it offends my group.”
 
“But I meant to honor the group by using the term for the beneficial value it connotes.”
 
“You aren’t a member of the group, so you can’t use the word.”
 
Imagine. Our species has survived 200 millennia of earthquakes, tsunamis, eruptions, meteorite strikes, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides and avalanches, floods and fires, heat and cold. But it doesn’t look promising for our surviving the use of words, the ascription of guilt, and the absence of responsibility.    

Are schools places for interminable experimentation on children? The pendulum seems to swing between making children acquire information and making children discover the world with only a bit of guidance. “Don’t feel like learning this today? What would you like to learn?”
 
Heraclitus framed the dilemma in one of his fragments: You can’t have understanding without facts, and you can’t have facts without understanding.” We’ve bounced between the two since he wrote that, but after 1775, we’ve  leaned a little more toward understanding without the acquisition of facts. Why that year? That’s the year in Neuhof that Johann Heinrich Pestolozzi started an educational movement that is still with us. Pestolozzi introduced compassion into eighteenth century education. Working with his small group and showing love for his students, Johann achieved success: His students thrived in the nurturing environment.
 
But then.
 
But then his educational system spread. He established a larger school in Burgdorf. It, too, seemed to be a successful venture. Teachers went to learn his methods. The Swiss government bought into the methodology. The system spread. Spread to larger and larger school units, units with more students. And when Pestolozzi had acquired a national and international reputation, he moved on in his later years to become master at Yverdon. That’s when the system failed, becoming no more successful a methodology than any previous educational system. You probably want to know why.
 
As George Ripley writes in “Pestalozzi’s Method of Education,” “As a practical school-teacher Pestalozzi was nevertheless a failure in the end, because he relied on no force but that of personal affection to control his pupils. This divinest of methods succeeded remarkably while his schools were so small as to bring him into close paternal contact with every child. But at the large institution at Yverdon…the method broke down badly.”* Ripley goes on to say that Pestalozzi’s critics did not realize, in the words of a Mr. Quick, that the school reformer had changed the object in education. In Quick’s words, “The main object of the school should not be to teach, but to develop,” an idea that Ripley says is the “key to all modern education.”
 
Ripley then writes that “not every teacher even to-day has digested fully the idea that his duty is less that of stuffing a child full of facts than of developing its character and abilities, encouraging whatever of value exists within itself.” There you have it. In that statement lies the dilemma for schools. Facts or understanding? Chicken or egg? Affection or demand?
 
Pestalozzi gained his reputation and spread his system in the “ideal” teaching environment: One teacher and few pupils. Outside of that ratio, the system broke down. So, look at where we are today. We make teachers take courses in developmental psychology so they can understand individuals, and then we put them in large classrooms where knowing each student is challenging. We introduce variations of Pestalozzi’s methodology to introduce affection, and we then complain that students lack factual learning. We realize that character development is integral to education, so we declare that school officials stand in loco parentis, in the role of the parent, but we restrict by popular demand the discipline parents can instill.
 
The word teacher derives from tacn, “sign or mark.”  The Old English verb taecan means “guide, show, declare, warn, and persuade.” There’s even a relationship between the word teacher and “index finger,” the pointer finger that shows the way when people are lost. In literal pointing, we give the unlearned nonverbal instruction on how to reach a destination. The question we have to ask concerns the destination. Are teachers in the business of pointing students in the direction of reaching a destination that had always lain within themselves?
 
Education changed in that Burgdorf classroom in the eighteenth century when the Swiss government adopted Pestalozzi’s methodology. How did the change affect you? How do you put into practical use the quandary posed by Heraclitus? How do you adapt a system of compassion to a large population of children?
 
An underlying premise of the Pestalozzi formula according to Mr. Quick is that there is something of value that already exists in the child. Uncovering this a priori value in the Pestalozzi system is the chief role of the teacher. Is the premise valid? If it isn’t, then we can understand all those failing versions of the Pestalozzi system. If it is, then we have to ask ourselves how we enhance those inherent values with information. Facts or Understanding? One more than the other? How do you think we should balance the two?
 
*George Ripley, “Pestalozzi’s Method of Education, A.D. 1775” in The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13, edited by Rossiter Johnson, Charles Horne, and John Rudd, Gutenberg EBook #30186 online at
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170511120207.htm  

Herbert Hoover was largely responsible for spreading the idea that Ma Barker was a ruthless and intelligent planner of robberies and murders. The truth might be a bit different, but even if she were not a leader of a gang composed of her sons, she seems to have been an accomplice in their crimes. Her complicity has made her the subject of articles, books, film, and even an opera. Walking one’s children down the path to imprisonment or death in gun battles is hardly the ideal image of a mother’s role. Ma Barker is the antithesis of the ideal “Mother.”
 
The problem we all face is that once we establish ideas of what roles people should play, any variation, any exception, throws us into self-doubt and confusion. “How could a mother guide or support her children in a life of crime?” Yet, as Ma Barker’s life demonstrates, such mothers exist. Did Ma act in the best interests of her sons?
 
In the second century Alciphron wrote a series of letters to capture the nature of his era. He wrote fictional letters from prostitutes, gamblers, sons, and mothers living in Athens and in the countryside. In one of those letters, a son asks his mother to leave the farm and join him in the city for a festival. In another a mother named Phyllis writes to her soldier son Thrasonides, asking him to return to the farm:

"If you only would put up with the country and be sensible, and do as the rest of us do, my dear Thrasonides, you would offer ivy and laurel and myrtle and flowers to the gods at the proper time; and to us, your parents, you would give wheat and wine and a milk-pail full of the new goat's-milk. But as things are, you despise the country and farming, and are fond only of the helmet-plumes and the shield, just as if you were an Acarnanian or a Malian soldier. Don't keep on in this way, my son; but come back to us and take up this peaceful life of ours again (for farming is perfectly safe and free from any danger, and doesn't require bands of soldiers and strategy and squadrons), and be the stay of our old age, preferring a safe life to a risky one."*

Ma Barker or Phyllis? Both were “country folk” in origin. You would probably say Phyllis had her son’s best interests at heart. Not that you imply a life on the farm is a superior life to one elsewhere, but rather that a life of peace is superior to a life of violence. Fictional Phyllis is an ideal mother concerned about her son’s safety, but one could hope that she is a representation of most mothers.

This might seem to be a strange Mother’s Day essay. There’s nothing profound in it: Just a thought that in a sense we all have children by virtue of our influence on those in a younger generation. We don’t have to be blood relatives to set values for those too young to know the consequences of their actions. And we don't have to be literal mothers; everyone can be a surrogate mother. 

Every generation has its children gone astray. Every generation has “Phyllises” who wish to save them from the dire consequences of bad choices and actions. So, I’m recommending here that if you wish to be an ideal “mother” (gender is irrelevant here), you might get a wayward child to listen to Episodes 53 and 54 of Tackling Life, the free podcasts by Ray Lewis and Dr. Christian Conte available on ITunes.** In the those episodes, the two join Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel in Graterford State Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison to discuss with lifers how they went down a Ma Barker type of path instead of a Phyllis path and how they have since come to understand and regret “the moment they made the wrong decision.” Wetzel, Lewis, and Conte are actively trying to change the culture of violence and self-destruction that permeates much of American life and to decrease recidivism. That lifers can change their perspectives provides encouragement that those not yet lost to crime can alter their paths with compassionate guidance. Why should, as Secretary Wetzel asks, we have to work for redemption and restoration on the backend of wrong decisions? Why can’t we front-load the help with sufficient skill that today’s youth understand their actions have consequences that could be dire?

Every generation probably has its share of Ma Barkers. Maybe all of us should serve in the role of a Phyllis. Call back to a peaceful life those who have taken up the life of the sword.

* https://ia800302.us.archive.org/3/items/libraryoftheworl12369gut/12369-h/12369-h.htm#FROM_AN_ANXIOUS_MOTHER
** https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tackling-life/id1172503219?mt=2   

On a Personal Level: You might think I recommend Tackling Life because I am related to one of the hosts, but I believe the burgeoning following of the podcast is the product of the inspirational nature in what Ray Lewis and Dr. Conte do. Most of their shows are so highly inspirational and entertaining that they have now a worldwide following, as evidenced by their Fan Friday episodes and messages from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia by people seeking the concrete advice and motivation that the hosts readily give. Tackling Life episodes also center at times on interviews of people with inspirational stories. Now some 50-plus episodes into their first season, the two motivators are doing what they can to improve the lives of their listeners as well as the lives of the many people they address in their public appearances. Ray is busy working to improve the lives and safety in communities fraught with violence; Dr. Conte is busy exercising his Yield Theory to alter the lives of violent offenders to ensure they do not return to their criminal activities. And both have addressed issues of personal responsibility with high school and college athletes. Secretary Wetzel, Dr. Conte, and Ray Lewis appear to be fulfilling roles as modern surrogate Phyllises. Are you fulfilling yours?  

In the fall, 2014, Tanzanian authorities arrested 23 people accused of killing seven witches in Kigoma, a region in the country’s Northwest. At the time, a Tanzanian group concerned with human rights estimated their fellow countrymen kill about 500 “witches” each year. Among those killed are albinos because “their body parts are thought to bring prosperity.” * Barbaric, right? Witches! Really?
 
Are we living in late seventeenth century Salem? Recall the circumstance? In 1692 the so-called Salem Witch Trials led to the deaths of the accused, eventually reaching a mob fervor for more and more bloodshed. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible dramatizes the trials, and there are numerous historical accounts, including the words of those involved in stirring the bloodlust, people like Cotton Mather.
 
As historian Richard Hildreth explains, “Cotton Mather seems to have acted, in a degree, the part of a demagogue. Yet he is not to be classed with those tricky and dishonest men, so common in our times, who play upon popular prejudices which they do not share, in the expectation of being elevated to honors and office. Mather's position, convictions, and temperament alike called him to serve on this occasion as the organ, exponent, and stimulator of the popular faith.”**
 
We are living in twenty-first century “Salem,” though we know it by “the Web” or “social media.” It’s the place of accusation, and it’s the place of condemnation and execution. Social media have Cotton Mathers, relatively bright people who see accusations as a means to self-aggrandizement or “stimulation” of “popular faith.” Once an idea, however true or false, begins to spread locally, someone stimulates it over the Web, social media, or even in various “news” outlets, such as TV and radio.
 
Before you take someone to trial on the Web, ask yourself whether or not you are following a Cotton Mather. You don’t need to learn the lesson New England society learned the hard way in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They hanged innocent people with ropes; now we hang them with wireless WiFi.
 
* 
BBC World News: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29572974 
** https://ia902704.us.archive.org/33/items/thegreateventsby09929gut/7ge1210.txt
​

Note a rhythm in your life? The what-goes-around-comes-around cycle? The periodicity of feelings and even similar events in places infused with your personal deja vu?
 
In “The Rhythm of Life,”* Alice Meynell describes the periodicity as “what is just upon its flight of farewell is already on its long path of return.” By experience we know, in her terms, the “tides of the mind,” a personal cycle. For each of us, the return of feelings, thoughts, and habits is a reminder of our continued Self. Our own periodicity is evidence and outline for a recognizable character.
 
And one of the drivers of our mind’s tides is place. In another of her essays** she writes:
 
     "Spirit of place!  It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen   once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.  It is recalled all a lifetime, having been perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one living body of remembrance.  The untravelled spirit of place--not to be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without variation--lurks in the by- ways and rules over the towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness."
 
The tides of our mind ebb and flow under the influence of a memory moon whose phases periodically drown and expose the elements of our character. There is ironically an unmeasured measure of our lives. We know in deju vu that we have somehow experienced what we now experience, but we never keep a strict accounting of its appearance in our lives. Meynell writes that “in all the diaries of students of the interior world [assume she means personal psychology], there have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such cycles.” We don’t keep strict track of the repetitive orbits of character. We simply have a vague notion punctuated by the returning tide in a metric over which we have no control.
 
Meynell says,
 
   "If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical.  Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts.  Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known.  Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure.  What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind."
 
Does this apply to your own life? Are you happy by virtue of unpredictable but inevitable tides in your mind? Can you identify a periodicity in your makeup? And one more question: What role does the “spirit of place” play in either your happiness or suffering?

 
*”The Rhythm of Life” in Essays (2014), https://ia902302.us.archive.org/4/items/essays01434gut/1434.txt
** “The Spirit of Place”