SERIOUS GRAVITY (A SANITY PRIMER)

Standing on the steps of Stroud Hall,  the epicenter of the philosophy, philology, theology and anthropology departments @ the University of M_____ - the dapper professor in the bow tie and the pointed loafers, with a large tuft of miscreant white hairs wafting across his forehead - greeted us with a look of supreme confidence. His specialty - > that strain of deep thought referred to as natural theology - a conjoining of skeptical traditions (in philosophy) with mystical traditions (in theology) with the stated aim of reaching some absolute common ground between believer and non-believer; this man, so justly famous (among a select group of scholars numbering no more than 17) for his 897 page treatise on the Absolute Mystery -  a large umbrella concept meant to embrace the SET containing all possible speculations whether upon God or gods or higher intelligence/s, or cosmic underpinnings or  "Laws of Nature" or Mind/Matter dichotomies, overarching randomness, chance a...

 I t can be a wonderful thing to be a patient, because there at the hospital, the facility as we call it, @  people are there taking care of you; they tell you from time to time that things are "getting better," that a "cure" of sorts is in sight; there are other patients there to compare notes with. Such places can be inviting, or should i say, well-structured, living spaces with white walls, long corridors, vending machines, aquatic prints, fountains and garden paths; the food here is reliable if never delicious, the beds are high-enough off the ground, the ceiling lights adjustable. Coffee is available and with some effort kindred souls can be found here to converse with. That is encouraged in fact. And they promise people like ME field trips - to help jar the memory banks. Although I am quite old (as far as one can tell) I am suffering not from dementia, but from bouts of amnesia - i.e. having trouble holding all the episodes of my life together like a pack of c...