An Exciting Life

Yesterday evening our eldest son was here, and, as we often do, we talked about where I might put more bookshelves, even though there doesn’t seem to be any place for them. I said I thought we should go ahead and build several, and that the simple truth of their physical presence would answer the question. There is room, in other words, but more shelves are needed to find it. He agreed, just as he agrees every time I venture this solution. Another reliable approach, I said, is to go on buying books, and a lot more of them, on the same principle. It worked in the past. I would never have the twenty or twenty-five shelves I have now if I hadn’t brought home so many books in the first place. Neither would I have turned so many other miscellaneous tables and chairs into shelves. And so in the end, it really has nothing to do with space, and everything to do with books.

Thank you for your letter, even if you have yet to write it.

A partly sunny walk this morning included a short visit with the woodcutter, who, as usual this time of year, looked at my bare feet, grimaced, and said, “Your feet will get cold.” I told him they wouldn’t, but he didn’t believe it. In a sense, he thinks my feet are his feet. He was sitting in his garage, resting a while before getting up to split wood. He had cut himself in three places shaving — twice on his chin, once on his upper lip. He and his wife have two cats — or, rather, two cats have them. Both arrived from somewhere in the neighborhood, and now sleep in the house and are living the good life. One they named “Miss Kitty.” The other, which is black and white, they call “BW.”

Read Bees and Their Keepers, by Lotte Möller, Pages 125-134. For the month of September: A Tricky Question Recalled and Repeated Attempts to Understand Rudolf Steiner’s Thoughts on Bees.

What, exactly, is an exciting life? Is it one that keeps us busy enough and distracted enough to silence thoughts of our mortality? (I almost wrote dizzy enough.) Is it to some degree dangerous? (What, in essence, could be more dangerous than being alive? Isn’t life the supreme danger, as well as the supreme challenge, satisfaction, and comfort?) (In fact, if being alive, in and of itself, isn’t exciting, if it isn’t interesting, isn’t that really something of our own making and doing?)

November 13, 2023.

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