14th October, 2009.
Dear (young lady),
I enclose a letter I wrote to a friend of mine, an artist, a painter, a long time friend. He is a good artist and a good friend, with some sort of mumbo jumbo philosophy which I have not tried to understand, which he does not often bring into a conversation, but which appears to be totally off the wall and meaning, if it means anything, that nothing means anything.
Anyway, yesterday I was sitting alone with him in his kitchen talking about I don't know what when I must have used the word "truth" and Peter asked "What is truth?" This more or less floored me, coming from an apparently intelligent man (did he want a true answer?) Then he pointed at the most trivial object to hand, the handle of a cup, and asked "What is the truth of that handle?" I may have mumbled something like "It is a handle" and then a few larger ways of looking at truth were raised and the subject was dropped, Peter having apparently won the argument (his argument being there is no truth and his argument being false because if his argument is true then there is truth).
I am not a slot machine. I don't (always) provide instant answers. The truth comes dropping slow, to paraphrase a poem by W. B. Yeats. The answer to Peter's argument came to me in the early hours of the morning, and I wrote the enclosed.
I asked a friend of mine, a working-class man, a craftsman, to read it and I asked him did he understand it. He said "Yes". He said "If he (Peter) doesn't know what truth is now, he will never know", or words to that effect.
The reason I asked that friend of mine whether he understood the letter is twofold or, possibly threefold. First, I want my words, written or spoke, to be understandable by absolutely anyone. Second, I am from the middle, or upper middle class sector of society and there is a danger I might express myself in a way understandable to the class from which I spring, but not to others, or so I feared.
However, as a child, I found that, when reading a very well written book, such as the Sherlock Holmes books, words new to the reader are understandable from the context. Words truly used are clear, as to meaning. Third, Christ expressed himself in words understandable to a child and no one should express themselves otherwise.
****
About two hours have elapsed since I wrote the above words, I had my lunch and worked with my brother on the computer. That was at home, now I am in a hotel. Its virtually empty, being eleven ten p.m. in the off season. I had exhausted the above topic, anyway.
I want to say something about class, social class, which raised its ugly head some while ago in these pages. It is artificial, manmade and meaningless. Someone wrote about Jesus and social class. His father was a carpenter, that is the skilled working class. He worked as a fisherman, that is a rung further down the ladder, unskilled work. He had a friend who was a prostitute, the lowest of the low. He went to a party, that was middle class. What may be said in sum? Class meant nothing to him.
Oscar Wilde said there are only two kinds of books, good books and bad books. The same may be said of people. The theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, of whom you may or may not have heard, said "People are not equal, they are complementary".
Finally, finally this letter to you seems to be coming to an end. Why did I decide to send you the enclosed letter (The Truth Defined)? This afternoon, at this hotel, I was at the outside tables (it was a fine day), I still had not sent the letter to Peter, and I thought you might like that letter.
Something about you, something about how you responded or did not respond when I used the expression "A cross to bear" on the phone to you recently. Also, you have something about you, genuineness, which is always a pleasure to meet.
There is a saying, "What everyone knows is wrong". To an old friend of mine, I said "Suffering is good". "How else do we learn?" he replied.
On that note, goodbye for now,
Love (Uncle Aesop)
****
(When I spoke to the young lady to whom this letter is addressed she said she was in a hurry when she read it and thought the word 'love' (the second last word) was 'Coming on a bit strong', (nothing about the content). I composed several letters to her defending 'love', inside or outside of quotation marks, but sent none of them. I may post one to her, or on this blog, as the spirit moves me.
Young people are typically busy, busy, busy. What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare?)
D
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