A Ponderable Quote::
Readers of the Then and Now Newsletter know that I have found the work of Maurice Brendenheim to be worth pondering. Here’s one example”
“Having shed its skin the garter snake silently slithered away. When it returned to the spot a few days later it paid no attention to that remnant of its former self. But seeing that skin brought me back to a remote Eden I had once inhabited. Was it indeed a remnant of a former life, perhaps the mark of a teacher of moral philosophy who told us how to live our lives, provided, of course, that we maintained decorum and respected the requisite dress code. He won the Teacher of the Year Award; he showed us the difference between good and bad, and inspired us to make a choice. How intensely we listened to his every word, each syllable, the succession of sibilants, Socrates, Spinoza, solipsism.
“Was this then then a skin he had abandoned? Was it part of a past he no longer needed, and which we could neither recover nor do without? Had he slithered out of it to become a free agent, challenging us to do the same whatever the consequences?“
Maurice Brendenheim Confessions I, p. 326
Readers of the Then and Now Newsletter know that I have found the work of Maurice Brendenheim to be worth pondering. Here’s one example”
“Having shed its skin the garter snake silently slithered away. When it returned to the spot a few days later it paid no attention to that remnant of its former self. But seeing that skin brought me back to a remote Eden I had once inhabited. Was it indeed a remnant of a former life, perhaps the mark of a teacher of moral philosophy who told us how to live our lives, provided, of course, that we maintained decorum and respected the requisite dress code. He won the Teacher of the Year Award; he showed us the difference between good and bad, and inspired us to make a choice. How intensely we listened to his every word, each syllable, the succession of sibilants, Socrates, Spinoza, solipsism.
“Was this then then a skin he had abandoned? Was it part of a past he no longer needed, and which we could neither recover nor do without? Had he slithered out of it to become a free agent, challenging us to do the same whatever the consequences?“
Maurice Brendenheim Confessions I, p. 326