RE: Delusions. . .

Staci…

Why have you never brought up Helprin before? The passage you quote in Delusions. . . is scrumptious. Should I begin with Winter’s Tale ? Or Soldier?

A couple things about categorisation… You’ve categorised that post in both Beauty and Perfection . I think as far as the sub-categories go, we should pick one. I know with the sub-categories of Synonyms (God, Beauty, Perfection & Love), that will sometimes be difficult. They are, afterall, synonymous. 😉  However, I think it’s important to always ask ourselves what the true intent of the posting is, and categorise it accordingly. I’ll try and set out what I mean by each…

• God : This sub-category isn’t about the white-haired guy painted on the ceiling of the chapel. Rather, it’s about divinity, the divine, whether observed or experienced. Epiphanies, visions, connectedness — those moments in time when we are individually or collectively in touch with something grand, when someone might be tempted to say, "I’ve been touched by God." An example for me is skiing. It doesn’t happen for me all the time, but there are runs, or portions of them, when I experience with a Zen-like connectedness. It’s that sense of feeling so connected that my I can sense the snow with my skis, as if they were a part of me. We’ve talked about this at length, so you know what I’m talking about here.
• Beauty : this one’s all about you, beautiful. <grin> OK. Yea, it’s about what we perceive as beautiful, exquisite. So art, dance, words, nature, anything that moves us by harmony of form or expression. But I also want this sub-category to explore things like inner beauty, and especially the beauty in all things. I’m thinking particularly of Saicho’s "To a practioner of Tendai, everything is wonderful" which I talk about in Everything is Wonderful and mention briefly in Glenn .
• Perfection : To be perfect is to be divine. It’s not something anyone will ever achieve. But that shouldn’t stand in the way of pursuing it. That passage from Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War is a perfect example. "If you really want to enjoy life, you must work quietly and humbly to realize your delusions of grandeur. " That’s pitch perfect for this category. As beautiful as that passage is, as much as it talks about beauty, what he’s really trying to teach Nicolo is how to seek perfection. Perfection is a delusion of grandeur, but life is lived best when persuing it anyway.
• Love : Of course, this sub-category isn’t about romantic love, no matter how divine that can be. (I do love your gallery posting, Passion , but think its artistic content nearly makes it more appropriately sub-categorised in Beauty. That kind of love is the source of so much dukkha!) It’s not even about brotherly love, or the love of a parent for a child. Yes, these aspects of loving will represent much of the material that goes into this category, but the kind of love I’m looking for is the loving kindness variety: self-less love; love that is given freely, unconditionally, without expectation or need. Love that is an expression of peace with one’s self, and sharing the expression of that peace with another.

Does that illuminate what I’m thinking with these sub-categories any better?  If a post explores more than one sub-category then use tags to make that clear, but choose the sub-category most appropriate to your intent. There may be a few occasions where it’s appropriate for posts to appear in more than one sub-category, but we’ll handle that on a post-by-post basis.

You’ve perhaps noticed I’ve added a new primary category, Muses . We can use this for posts which describe, review or otherwise explore a resource from outside this blog like books, film, music and images. I’ve made each of those a sub-category in Muses. I’ve also taken the liberty of applying these categories to my posts and yours too. As you can see from the way I’ve categorised Delusions, a post can appear in both Synonyms and Muses.

btw: I’m so glad you decided to participate in this. I’m already loving the quality of your posts. This is getting very exciting!

xo