Four aphorisms.

By the end of the year an old friend of mine will be wandering Indochina with a business card that reads "Joachim Heldenberg: Adjustments." He's the kind of man I want at the cultural keel--mercurial, daring, a little heroic, a man who could nudge our society when it isn't looking. If blogging has anything to do with really disseminating real ideas, let me be honest--he should be writing here, not me.

Ah, well. We'll say that Shams writes the poem. So--four words from a friend I love:

1. Metaphysics is creative.
2. Metaphysics is not a discovery; it is an invention.
3. Metaphysics is aesthetics run through rhetoric.
4. It is permissible to engage in metaphysics with a teleological goal fashioned a priori.