bedtime stories.....

It would be an awful thing if you loved someone andcouldn't tell them why. Yet that may be the case moreoften than we realize. Lovers don't have to sayanything. Words fail them. It doesn't matter. Eachknows the other's heart in the silence of a glance ora kiss.We get into real trouble when it comes to explainingto family or friends why that special someone hasknocked us off our high horse. Perhaps it's becausepheromones are so hard to describe. We're left babblingabout beauty and brains and charm to people who don'tquite get it. In the end they shrug their shoulders."It's your life," they say. "If you can't be good, becareful."It's the same with all obsessions. In the old days,back when there was only one professional league inbaseball, the people who sat out in the bleachersgetting sunburned every Sunday afternoon were calledcranks. Now we call them fans. Crank has taken on aless savory connotation. We forget that the word fanis short for fanatic. I like the game a lot. I reallyget caught up at World Series time. But I still thinkanyone who pays scalper prices for a ticket to a seventhgame that may never happen is a serious nut case.All this is prelude to a little difficulty I'm having.Suddenly I'm embarrassed. I can't talk about this. Itwould be better if I were addicted to video games. Inthat case people would just look away. But if I say thatmy thing is....well, I don't want to say it because Idon't like the word. Once you start to talk aboutphilosophy people either switch off or go off. I don'tblame them. As I say, I don't like the word. It is amisnomer and its early use by Socrates to discreditthe sophists was a piece of sly sophistry.What's more, the antipathy most people have towardphilosophy is not rooted in ignorance but in knowledge.They've seen enough to know they don't want to sitthrough the whole nine innings. The game is too slow.It is often inconclusive and can last far into thenight. The obvious excitement has nothing to do withthe outcome. Important actions have the subtlety of athird-base coach touching his ear then his chin.This might be a good place for the queasy to get offthe Ferris wheel before we start going 'round and 'round.In fact, I'd be well advised to quit before I loosetrack of my point. Which was...oh yeah, that peoplecomplain it makes their brains hurt when I try to tellthem what it is that makes my heart sing.This is not surprising. Philosophy is a lot like sex.You can talk about it all you want, but people getupset if you start doing it in front of them. They liketo watch flirtation and courtship. They're charmed bythe chubby-cheeked byproducts of the nasty act, butdon't try to show them the thing itself.Whoops, did I slip up and use a philosophical term? Thething itself? The thing-as-such? I won't try to be hightone and say it in German or Greek. Though there is abenefit to the euphemistic quality of foreign words.Cunnilingus, for example, is neither as sloppy nor astasty as its Anglo-Saxon cognate.Even those who allow themselves to contemplate suchperversions of nature cringe from the suggestion thatreality has an inner reality. More precisely they cringefrom those who make such claims.All this whinging of mine is really about the diffi-culties of writing philosophically. Or more preciselyabout reading what I have written to a group of fictionwriters who like nothing so much as concrete images."Put in more pot roast," they say. "Make the pot roaststringy and the carrots undercooked. That will showthat the mother is too absorbed in religion to givethe boy a proper upbringing."Okay, okay, nobody actually said that. In fact, theircomments were very helpful. After all, they are justsuch people as I want to reach with the strange tale ofhow philosophy and I done each other wrong. The story ispersonal, perhaps a bit novelistic. Certainly onerequiring the tools of the novelist. So the language mustbe crisp, the imagry vivid. Yet it is the nature of thetask that I must from time to time actually speak ofwhat lies at the heart of the matter.I might tell you that a certain insight made my palmssweat and my breathing quicken. But will you reallyunderstand if I do not take you there? Herein lies theproblem. The traditional language of philosphy has animperious tone. It teaches from on high. It sneers atthe mundane and tangable, exactly those things thatreaders cling to in order to follow the narrative.The French have a saying that without adultery thereis no novel. Yet I've noticed in my own efforts towrite fiction that sex scenes slow the story down. Toomuch positioning and repositioning. Better just in andout quickly. I am trying to adopt the same strategy intelling of my attempts to penetrate the veil ofillusion. Yet always my nerve and my technique failme.Perhaps it would be better if I didn't try. I couldjust advise my readers to read the real thing if they'reinclined. There's a joke about a man who goes to prison.In line, waiting outside the mess hall, he notices thatwhen some inmates call out numbers others laugh. He asksthe fellow next to him what that's all about. "Oh," theanswer comes back, "everyone knows all the jokes. Sowe've numbered them. When you want to tell a joke, youjust call out the number." The new prisoner thinks aboutthis and decides he'll try to fit in. So he calls out anumber. Nobody laughs. He turns to his neighbor and asksif he picked the wrong one. The guy shakes his head. "Nah.Some people can tell a joke, some people can't."It would be as foolish of me to try to retell thePhaedrus or the Timeaus. No one has yet matched Plato'sgift for dialogue. And how could I render the passionof Spinosa for his logical God, or the poetry ofNietzsche's Zarathrustran cave myth? I might tell youwhat thoughts these narratives have occasioned in me,but my responses will pale next to yours. You have onlyto go to these rich and resonant texts. Is this unpleasantor difficult? No more than lacing up a pair of sneakersand breaking into a sweat three times a week.It's likely you were immunized against philosophy withsmall bitter doses in college. Have another look. Timeand experience may have altered what you are able tosee. These works are like bedtime stories which, nomatter how many times we hear them, always offer ussomething new.I realize it does no good to urge people to read thingsthat excite me. Those who will have already done so. Forthe rest, who think the core of being is better lefthidden, the great philosophers are no more than porno-graphers, inflaming the mind until it swells with acraving for illicit knowledge that can never be satis-fied.In some benighted cultures men with veneral diseasebelieve they can be cured by having sex with a pubescentvirgin. I seem to have the idea that I can be freed frommy affliction by inflicting it on others. In any case,it is the only story I have and I feel compelled to tellit.One more thing; then I will stop grinding my axe.Philosophy seems to be about texts. Yet philosophydoesn't happen on the page, any more than the score isthe symphony. What one finds in philosophical writingis the notes, not the music. Philosophy is the musicwhich cannot be heard. Like old deaf Beethoven we canonly sense this music on our bones.The most damning charge against philosophy is that itis useless. But music is of no use either, except thatwe cannot live without it. Philosophy is the greatestgame and the highest art. Whether we are players orspectators, we are richer for it. Philosophy does notput food on the table, but it is the best of reasons forkeeping our nourishment up.In the end, this is about me. I seem to be filled witha music I cannot play. I lack a proper instrument. Inthe case of philosophy the instrument is one's own self.I put mine in hock years ago and lost the ticket. Thefact that I can still hum bits of the melody line doesnot mean I can play the piece, let alone compose musicof my own.This may not be the whole truth. But it's a start.