Ethics

It is wrong to clip one's nails on the subway. And yet, I saw a man doing so the other day. I believe, with Socrates, that if one truly knows the right course of action, one will inevitably choose said right course. The hard part is the knowing. If only this man had known that it is wrong to clip one's nails on the subway!

Strange Boy

Strange boy, he was. In the yard he sat staring at the large evergreen tree that towered in the corner of the yard. The tree bloomed over the yard like a yawning mouth. Many times, he had climbed the tree’s sticky, sappy limbs. The limbs were rather thin for such a tall tree. The pine cones and pine needles littered the shaded bed below. He stared. It was a concentrated gaze through which the boy endeavored. Endeavored to be. There was the tree, yes, he could see, and there was the boy, yes, himself he knew. But were there two? The boy was thirteen years old is all. Yet already it seemed to him there were not two but one. That he was the tree when he looked at the tree. So he stared. Trying to keep it in mind. In mind. In his strange mind the tree bloomed over the yard casting shadows in which he sat staring at the tree with his strange mind.