In the landscape of life one may find, among many other things great and small, the mountain range of the mind. To I, no adept mountain goat, this range of mind is a great challenge. The variety of modes and feelings possible, the subtleties of conception, overwhelm such that life is like wandering through a labyrinth blindly. Why does my reasoning draw frivolous circles? Why do my emotions lead me awry? The pivot of life, perhaps, lies beyond the efficacy of our conception–and yet it is so integral! Or the pivot is not beyond grasping, only one's present conception of the pivot is fruitless. And so on.

This is no unbeaten horse, the acknowledgement must be made, and my sympathies to the horse.

In elucidating the mountains of the mind a failure of words sets on quickly: one does not feel feelings and generate logics through words, after all, but works with them as they are. Yes, words may guide or layer on–but necessary? I'd easily say not. It is presumptuous to use words to discredit themselves though, and so/yet an presumptuous acknowledgement goes out to them as a kind of appendage of thought–neither the trunk nor foreign.

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There is a style quite popular among fiction, for it to be 'soft.' It brings a whimsy, a fantasy, a detachment to it. Because the author cannot conceive what is authored, there is a distance between the writing and the frame of the world, and this distance becomes a 'softness.' Whether words of fluttering fairy, brooding bloodlust or rusty mundanities, a kind of glaze comes over the words and in turn attacks the reader's minds. This 'soft' feeling is in fact not light, but heavy and dreadful and against the once aforequoted first principle of aesthetics. With mileage 'soft' grows heavier, a sore toe blisters and then an infection may come about, luck and rest unproviding. Perhaps it is an aspect of all fiction–rooting things out of fiction is difficult business. After all, the mind is the key to fiction and generating meaning–two may journey the same fantasy quite differently, sharing the word but not world.

So I say this 'soft' style may offer refuge and great appeal, but we are not to be infants as long as we live.

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There is a worry of repetition in living, as it progresses, perhaps tied to the elegiac longing for days past. Once we sort out the world as a child, the challenge is through with. Yes, there are many refinements to be made, many struggles and intricacies to be dealt with, but the gauntlet never comes again...There is a worry of repetition in dullness, that is a better way to put it.

"Plodding thuds in the wrong direction" I declared. A stumble into confusion.