I'll make my sensitivity go into flower.

(:title I'll make my sensitivity go into flower.:)

2005/9/30 1:36am

There’s a great bit of Engrish in the tunnel under Toyama Station: I’ll make my sensitivity go into flower. Normally, I’m not overly interested in Engrish, since I have come to make my peace with the state of English language education in the land of eight islands. For the most part, English here is stylistic, rather than semantic. It’s cool. Whateva’. Let’s enjoying.

However, I really like this particular bit, because it nicely encapsulates a certain goal of poetic living. The greatest pathos comes, as Keats wrote, to he who would “burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine.” So too, the ordinary objects of existence are, by virtue of their ordinariness, infinitely melancholic. So, nothing intrigues me so much as taking my sensitivity and pouring it out into the flowers of this world. “Though fragrant are the colors, / Yet shall the flowers scatter. / Who in our world / Could forever endure?” ^[1]

Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Yet still, it is the love of doubting wisdom. Love, real love, is not just a feeling inside. It is what the feeling compels you to do. Greater love hath no man, but that he act and give up his own life for his friends. To love wisdom is also to be enamored of doubt. Doubt common sense. Doubt all that is told. Know only that you know nothing… …and act!

The heart of such is to feel all things in the world. Open yourself even unto the smell of your own apartment! Becoming sensitive to all things, I feel only the flowers. Feeling the flowers, I am the wind and rain. The universe aches in its way.