I'm supposed to slash John with a long Japanese sword...

   John says that my experience of 'beauty' is merely a feedback loop: The projection of my own prejudices onto the world, obscuring its objectivity.
   By the same token, isn't logic a feedback loop? After all, to say, 'this is true because it is logical and it agrees with my existing philosophical and cognitive prejudices' seems to be merely the masculine equivalent of 'this is true because it is beautiful, thus affirming my existing aesthetic and emotional biases'.
   I also contest him on his assertion, still, of the superficiality of Personality distinctions. I have always, in mature life as well as my most memorable childhood moments and Eternities, gravitated towards the temperament of the emotive poet over that of the intellectual, despite brief visits to the latter. Had I stayed as a Thinker rather than a Feeler, my choice would have been probably advantageous to me, sparing me many uncomfortable conflicts that, nonetheless, for the sake of sheer Truth, I chose to endure.
   As a poet who did not always know it, I universally felt that it was a matter of the deepest, most incontrovertible wisdom that what was Beautiful was revelation: That those moments in Life when I experienced a splendor of utmost novelty were when the Universe was looking me straight in the face, almost scoffing at the petty attempts of my logical mind to map it.
   It was not a feedback-loop: It was contact with an alien Other that was nonetheless the very Ground of Being, and thus all other truly beautiful things seemed a part of the same energy, to be revered. And it always came unexpectedly and spontaneously, never by virtue of my adherence to a doctrine. 'Anatman' is a tantalising state of ambivalence when regarded intellectually, but what really discerns it from any other form of intellectual stuffiness that my spoiled mind could cling to?
   I saw Dan Faughnder today. His very presence, however momentary and fleeting, in my day left an imprint that mere memory could not recall. Had I been less preoccupied with contemplating Anatman and trying to make the external world conform to my logical prejudice, maybe I should have seen his soul without hesitation, but it was delayed until I reached Starbucks.
   Here was a Beautiful man, and should I have forgotten that I would not have Seen him. Is any beauty a falsehood?
   Do we not arrive at truth by stressing our most gorgeous extremes, rather than conforming to a sterile balance?

  dm.A.A.