It is nearly impossible

Yet it is nearly impossible to languish in sorrow when one still has the ability to surround oneself with artifacts of fine minds ... Botticelli on the wall, Bach on the box, volumes of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, on the shelf ... Some fragments of philosophy: only those parts that still speak to the person of this moment; forget about immutable human nature (no such thing!) and recall only the trials and tribulations of THIS DAY. Such is the locus of the human frame, which frames a bit of the All, and calls it Life. So my time as a willing slave to the most beautiful of women -- Was that time a waste of my perennially rejuvenating self? Not at all. As I sit here by my window, tapping out these words, I am painfully aware of waste. Not of self, but of time. The major terror of strife is not the danger of the strife itself, but the inevitable deflation that occurs when the strife has ended. Empedocles seems to have known this, for he brought in Love as a balancing force against Strife. Another comforting fiction, this. When I seek the warmth of my beloved's embrace, Strife must depart, and Love must shine ... Yeah, yeah, sappy poetical notion ... But it is a true feeling, as much as feeling can ring with the piercing clink of truth.