Saturday November 15th

One more beautiful day! One more beautiful evening! I had a great pow-wow with Gail about our class that we are getting together. We are actually thinking about offering it just before and just after the Gem Show….Interesting thought, it would make us work that much harder and think that much more concisely…not a bad thing that is for sure! I do not like it when my brain goes to MUSH! Well, we told each other that we would have definite decision by next weekend! That give Gail a chance to recover from her show this week and then to contemplate this!!!!

I think it could be really excellent of we offered it in Tucson and then had it down by the time we wanted to get it on the books to Philly and Portland! Yea???

So, here is what else I have been pondering this fine day! I have had 2 very serous phone calls today and each has given me much to ponder!!!

So, when is it that you reach the decision that you, as a human being, are worth more than you ever thought you were. I posted an image from Post Secret a few days… “we accept the love we think we deserve.” I am finding that statement to be truer that what we would consider it is, just on the surface. Both good and bad, we accept what we “THINK” we deserve. What happens when we realize that we deserve better, we deserve more, and we deserve to be treated with honor and respect….

Each of us, deserves that… we deserve the honor and the respect that is due another human being even on the basest level. I quoted, ages ago…what I thought love was and what I thought the truest meaning of what love should attain…that is still true…but the caveat is that you must look at yourself as just as worthy and deserving of the same level that you are giving! It cannot be an assumption that whom you give this honor to understands that it is what is to be given in return.

Does it have to be negotiated? Or is it just time that gives insight to the individual that you want to give this to…to see if they are actually worthy of such a gift. There is always a risk…and it is up to you to grant that risk at your own peril. The risk is that when you actually believe that one is so worthy of this gift they might actually be to good at deception for you to see the truth. It does take time and it is worth the risk...because the reward, if found worthy would be beyond compare.

Here is what I had to say in February!

Ayn Rand; The Romantic Manifesto
Chapter 2 Philosophy and Sense of Life
Pg 32-33 (February 1966)

There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.

I am referring here to romantic love, in the serious meaning of that term-as distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is devoid of any consistent values, i.e., of any lasting emotions other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love-with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul-the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one’s own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.

Many errors and tragic disillusionment's are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism-in terms of human suffering-is the belief that love is a matter of “the heart,” not of the mind, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is the expression of philosophy- of a subconscious philosophical sum-and, perhaps, no other aspect of human existence needs the conscious power of philosophy quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason and emotion, of mind and values, then-and only then-it is the greatest reward of man’s life.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. It is the integrator and concretize of man’s metaphysical abstractions. It is the voice of his sense of life. As such, art is subject to the same aura of mystery, the same dangers, the same tragedies-and, occasionally, the same glory-as romantic love.