LETTERS 

The writer had to question to himself what it was he had been adjusting to. What it was he had attempted to learn in the years leading up to his first painful change. He was coming out of a period where he spent valuable time in states of ungodly intellection. Here, now, were all the levels of activity that crawl toward the maw of organization. And here were the forms of intercourse between different organizations. And there was the will behind them exerting force beyond any meaning the writer could come up with.

The writer had learned one thing: put the specific over the general when comprehending activity. In America there was no set way. It required a high degree of rationality that he had not prepared for since the irrational was more akin to the literary imagination. To survive and make a living it was necessary to rationalize everything. He saw that this would do one of two things to the democratic people. It would either bring forth great change or it would make people afraid and, eventually, turn them into sheep. The writer could see that the age found difficulty in gaining meaning for itself since the central activity, work, came out of brand new activities in the industrial/technical area. These activities had no precedence and so the only meaning could be that of acquisition.

As soon as the writer felt good that he had come up with a key insight he noticed that great repudiation was taking place of the times he grew up in. 'Ah, just as I predicted.' Crazy things had taken place and had swept intellectual discipline out into the cold abyss. He had been around people who had been swept up. And they always wanted the writer to get swept up. And now they wanted him to wear their own repudiation. As if he did something wrong! 'But,' he wanted to say to them, 'I saw the dynamics long ago. You were part of the predictable acts and thoughts but held on to the passionate belief that the acts and thoughts were something utterly new.' The writer knew they had to do two things. They had to admit that problems are not solved through ideology and that things are better than they seem. Anything less would initiate a terrible flaming from flying too close to the sun.

'You mistook the sun for the moon!'

David Eide
July 21, 1999
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