Friday

The picture in yesterday's post was a tray displayed at the National Cathedral Gift Shop. It is a portion of a quote from Nietzsche...here's the whole quote from translation:

"We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also' [Matthew 6.21]; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey- gatherers of the spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart--'bringing something home.' Whatever else there is in life, so-called ,'experiences'--which of us has sufficient earnestness for them? Or sufficient time? Present experience has, I am afraid, always found us 'absent-minded': we cannot give our hearts to it--not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: 'what really was that which just struck?' so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, 'what really was that which we have just experi- enced?' and moreover: 'who are we really?' and, afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being--and alas! miscount them.--So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend our- selves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law 'Each is furthest from himself' applies to all eternity--we are not 'men of knowledge' with respect to ourselves." -- Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. & trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1968).

I get so lost reading that...are you still with me?

Today has been fairly productive; my geraniums are potted and placed on the front stairway, the tomato and companion marigolds are in the barrel, and the herbs are potted. I've pulled so many weeds growing between the bricks on the back walkway...they were pretty easy to pull, though. I'm so far ahead of last year with planting....I started my blog the day I put the plants out. I hope to get the sunporch cleared out and ready for some reading and relaxation.