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OVERTURE
a concordance of themes
words in SMALL CAPS are themes introducted previously



We want to come to an understanding of the idea of SUPREMENESS and what a vision of The Supreme would look like. We need not justify our interest or desire since such a question about motives [ MINDSET ] is a separate one, while acknowledging it as an integral part of the question since it's a subject that seeks Truth for some reason [ WHATEVER IS SAID, UNSAY IT ]. But in order for my DOGGINESS not to be thought of as having some unholy agenda or of trying to concoct a question that strains credibility for usefulness, a scenario can easily be provided [ REASON ] that may or may not be the case personally but nevertheless sets forth a valid justification for asking.
It's this:

When we look around we find varying degrees of QUANTITY AND QUALITY in all phenomena. We see heat that's hotter and less hot, love that's stronger and less strong, power more powerful and less so, and lives to varying degrees [ SELF-REALIZATION ] fulfilled and unfulfilled. And so we go on to speculate on the nature of our limitations, and of limitations in general. How hot can a fire be [ SCIENCE ]; what is the maximum amount of heat attainable and how many degrees. Or we think about speed and wonder how fast a thing might be able to travel before it can travel no faster.
But we can also ask about the fastest speed attainable without asking how fast any particular thing like a bird might be able to travel, but simply ask about speed as an abstracted property [ QUA BEING ], what is its upper limit.

In all of this we're asking about supremeness whether it's supreme heat or supreme speed or for that matter supreme love. We assume we can apply the quality and characteristic of supremacy to just about anything since we think of [ REASON ] supreme as the highest degree [ CONTINUUM ] whether the greatest quantity or the maximum possibility of event, or action, or characteristic that can be achieved since all things seem to take part in a scale of less to more. What is the maximum wage an individual person could be paid per hour? We would call that the supreme wage. Or, what is the supreme of human EXCELLENCE that can be attained to; and is it even [ PERFECTION, CONTRADICTION ] a meaningful question?

We can think of supremeness in both a positive and negative way. We can think of supremeness as more and more and more. And we can think of supremeness also as less and less and less—a DUALITY. It's obvious supremeness is more and more: faster speed which is more speed, larger wage which is more money, greater power which is more power. But can it be less and less as well? We don't typically ask questions like 'what is the slowest speed possible, the most disempowered person, or the least amount of money someone can earn.' Such answers return a zero [ NOTHING ], and yet the negensupreme when asked about correctly, and its counterpart, posisupreme, are two ways of expressing the same thing, and functionally [ STRUCTURE/CONTENT ] a unit [ MONODY ].
In the case of power it's easy to perceive in order for something to be more and more powerful it must as well have less and less restraints on its ability to be powerful. This is true for all things that we can measure in terms of more and less. More and greater speed if and only if there's less restraint on the ability to increase speed. More love is less inability not to love. In the same way SELF-REALLIZATION as supreme self-fulfillment appears to imply less and less things holding us back. A supreme thing with supreme THINGNESS of whatever kind has its ability not to be limited maximized [  UNLIMITEDNESS ].

Just as we ask in a general way about the most supreme speed to travel without asking about any particular moving object, bird, spacecraft, a beam of light, or consider the supreme degree of heat that can occur without specifying what is generating the heat, just so we can ask in a general way [ SELF-REFERENTIALITY ] what is the supremest kind of supreme that might exist without reference to anything it might apply to [ CONCEIVABILITY ]. We would be thinking DEDUCTIVELY in all such cases. And whenever we treat something as a 'qua itself' we're asking questions about the BEING of a thing as it's being itself. Heat as heat. Motion qua motion. Supremeness as supremeness itself even if we don't realize that such a question about supremeness is categorically different, so different we [ ABSOLUTE ] inadvertently step out of the ordinary realm of question asking and question answering [ LAWFULNESS ], no matter how much we might wish to remain inside that ordinariness we have [ QUANTITY/QUALITY ] qualitatively exceeded its limits. And supremeness after all is about exceeding limits [ UNLIMITEDNESS ], so let us proceed to exceed.

In determining the nature of supremeness inductively [ SCIENCE ] we would have to be sure of correctly understanding the nature of whatever it was we think to find supremeness in. This is true for noncorporeal things as well. If we were looking for supreme love, for example, we would have to make sure we understood the nature of Love before we could determine if supreme love was conceivably meaningful —remembering that love in different living things may be acted out differently, but by definition all love anywhere, any kind must have a commonality of essential properties—and go from there to deduce, or further induce what those common elements must be in order to call something 'love'.

What then might be a definition of "supreme"? One is a definition that combines the fact of supremeness being less and less with the fact of supremeness being more and more such that [ ESSENCE ] "The supreme is that which is least limited and therefore most able."
Obviously, one relative supreme will be more or less than another relative supreme. The supremely powerful horse would pull less weight than the supremely powerful elephant, keeping in mind the idea of a supreme horse has nothing to do with the length of its tail but with the essence of horseness since we don't define a horse's horseness by its tail whereas a very long length of an elephant's trunk might be part of what a supreme elephant would look like since trunks are essentially the character of elephants.)
It's not hard to infer and determine what the supremest supreme [ HIERARCHY ] of all would be using a definition of supreme as the maximum allowable degree of ability to act, or be. We can move along the CONTINUUM of less and less limitation/more and more ability without limitation in our minds [ CONCEIVABILITY ], and be clear about where we arrive. The supremest idea of supreme can only be one that's without any limitation at all having UNLIMITED ability to act without restraint of any measure. We aren't asking about mere (relative) supremeness which might exist in any relative thing somewhere but trying to determine if the supremest idea of supremeness can meaningfully exist. Such supreme supremeness has its maximum ability unlimited.
As an abstract idea there is nothing of CONTRADICTION about it but whether it can remain meaningful as the property of an existent is a different question. One may object that without a possible instantiation it can't be meaningful but in geometry figures routinely have ideal form. A circle, for example, is defined as having all points on its arc as equidistant from the center but no such circle could possibly exist in nature nor could it be drawn even with the most precision instrument.

To better visualize supreme supremeness consider the idea of a universal solvent. Is there a supremely supreme solvent such that it can dissolve any conceivable substance? We could [ SCIENCE ] take each solvent known and test it with each individual kind of material to see if it 1 dissolves each and every one 2 under all circumstances and conditions 3 at all times and places since its ability to be a solvent cannot be limited by any factor whatsoever. Finding no such solvent wouldn't make the idea of an unlimited solvent meaningless however. Some new solvent might be discovered that has supremely supreme character. We could instead study the nature of solvency itself and see if any substance could possess such a character in a supremely supreme way. If we conclude none could because of the nature of solvency then we could also conclude the idea of unlimited solvency was meaningless. And yet supreme supremeness [ SELF-REFERENTIALITY ] even if it could be shown from the nature of what it is that it could never instantiate [ STRUCTURE/CONTENT ] it would still be meaningful albeit with a null meaningfulness [ NOTHING ] but not therefore contradictory [ PARADOX ]. There is nothing contradictory in an idea being the property of itself [ QUA BEING ]. A horse has horseness [ PRIMAL AXIOMS ], and supremacy has supremeness [ CIRCULARITY ]. Unlimited supremeness which is the essential definition of supreme must have supremely supreme supremeness. To limit the definition of supreme to something less than completely unlimited is where the CONTRADICTION would lie.

One interesting property of unlimited supremeness is that at that level of supremacy ORDER and disorder are indistinguishable [ ANARCHY ]. Unlimited supremacy must of necessity by definition have a nature of supreme PARADOX.

Having no limitation in ability is an idea of negation. We use the word "unlimited" to express the maximum unrestricted [ QUANTITY or QUALLITY ] possible. "Un-" is a common prefix meaning 'lack of' and though "un-" doesn't intrinsically carry the sense of completely and totally lacking, it doesn't forbid it. Our use of "unlimited" like our use of "supreme", "perfect", and "absolute" are routinely relativized [ PARADOX ]. We speak of unlimited driving privileges which has nothing to do with being able to drive while drunk; a perfect cup of coffee is only the most in EXCELLENCE, and an absolutely good time is anything but absolutely absolute. But perfection to be perfect in definition must be perfectly perfect just as the absolute to be meaningful must be absolutely absolute but we can draw an imperfect circle and call it a circle and not be incorrect because we understand the ideal, and the actual are not the same [ DUALITY ], yet we can only call an imperfect circle a circle because we hold the ideal in our minds as meaningful. The idea is an archetype which is a kind of PARADIGM

Our language doesn't easily allow us to speak of such a supremely unlimited supreme because it doesn't have semantics amenable to absoluteness. We have the neutral term "limit" which can be modified negatively, "unlimited", or "limitless" to speak of less and less restraint but not to speak explicity of more and more ability. More importantly, there are no affixes that allow a distinction between the relative and the absolute [ CLASSIFICATION ] though easy enough to construct: holunlimited and hollimited is one possibility using the prefix "hol-" to mean "wholly". And so, holsupreme and holperfect meaning supremely supreme, and perfectly perfect, even holabsolute because "absolute" which originally meant just that is now relativized easily and often where holabsolute is once again absolutely absolute without relativity i.e. the Absolute. And for that matter the Unlimited and the Perfect though in speech using an uppercase makes for no distinction in sound.

We can also refer to this supremest idea of Unlimitedness as some THINGNESS "that-than-which-no-greater-can-be-thought".
It should be clear we can't actually think of absoluteness in any sense of picturing it in the mind since its nature is beyond conception but we can conceive it's inconceivableness, that is, we can have a conception about it's inability to be conceived that if we go in the direction of less and less limitation it will end in the complete and total absence of any limitation whatsoever. Just as we can't actually conceive of the largest natural number that can be counted [ PROCESS , QUANTITY/QUALITY , MULTIPLICITY ] because it is not finite but we can think and talk about it by calling it 'the largest number possible', or the number 'that-than-which-no-greater-can-be-conceived'.

The largest number is a good candidate for a supreme unlimitedness even if restricted to one property and not to the whole of the nature of number. What therefore might be known reasonably and without contradiction about such a number? Any number that can be added to or subtracted from [ DUALITY , MONODY ] is of limited quantity being more or less another number and cannot be conceived as having unlimited countable quantity if limited by countability.
A number with supreme quantity if it exists must be a number that cannot be counted because we reason that as long as a number is countable we can always say "number X plus 1" and "number X minus 1' and therefore no number X that is countable can also have unlimited quantity.
Unlimited countable quantity is a contradiction.
Have we then proved no number can have unlimited quantity? Not at all. We've only shown that supreme unlimitedness can't be applied to that characteristic of number quantity called countableness, or additivity. We have only demonstrated that countability is a characteristic of relative numbers but not necessarily of all numbers. What we do know is that all numbers must express quantity in some way but the supremely unlimited number is quantity without additivity for though additivity is the essence of counting, counting isn't the essence of quantity.
There can be no noncontradictory idea of supremely unlimited additivity such that no further addition can be made without contradicting the meaning of addition. However, since by definition a supremely unlimited number quantity could never be arrived at by counting, we might then surmise it could never be a member of a countable series or sequence of numbers (natural, fractional, negative).

By definition all numbers express quantities and by that concluded all numbers therefore count but all numbers must only be subject to expressing a comparison of magnitude. It's easy to conflate counting with comparing.
An experiment: take two large balls exactly the same size one of steel and one of cotton placing one in one hand and one in the other. We can then conclude the steel ball has a larger quantity of weight than the cotton. Nothing here about counting, or measuring. But we have compared the two balls and found one greater in quantity of weight demonstrating that we can quantify without counting and therefore quantifying and counting while casually synonymous are not identical. To quantify is to compare magnitudes. True, both balls have countable quantities of weight that can be measured, but we have shown nonetheless that quantification is not equal to a process of counting though it may imply it.
There's a characteristic of things called "magnitude" which is a characteristic we can refer to as "more-or-lessness". More-or-lessness is the essence of quantity. A number quantity is an expression of more-or-lessness which comes by comparison. There is nothing in the idea of magnitude which necessitates counting or measuring—only comparison, no matter if the magnitudes of the physical universe are relative and therefore always implying countable quantity. An unlimited quantity not being a relative quantity can not, must not imply counting. The supremely unlimited number is unlimited in quantity with no potential for or implied additivity because it's an uncountable magnitude.
It can be argued to be a quantity means to be measurable by a ruler, a scale, a gauge but all those things can measure magnitudes without discrete, definable and countable quantitativeness. We can logically conceive a supremely unlimited moreness such that more and more and more until no more is possible because we are not climbing the mountain of increase by discrete amounts which could never take us there, but arriving by a discontinuous, nondiscrete leap by which we arrive instantaneously.

The idea of supreme unlimitedness is a meaningful and conceivable idea characterized by at least one thing we know of: the idea of a magnitude quantity but how can a number be but a magnitude. It's not difficult to construct a number sequence expressing only magnitude. We create numbers called "A", "B", and "C" where number A is larger than B and C, and C is smaller than A and B. They are numbers though they don't count but nevertheless quantify.
There's another possible conflation to be disentangled and that is the difference between the infinite, uncountable, supreme number vs the nonfinite, but countable highest number. The latter number lies at the end of the series of additive, natural numbers which can never be arrived at but yet isn't infinite but only nonfinite. To be nonfinite is to be infinite in potentiality but not in actuality. But the supremely supreme number infinite in actuality must [ PARADOX, MONODY, DUALITY, REASON, ORDER, HIERARCHY, CLASSIFICATION, QUANTITY/QUALITY, ANARCHY, CONTINUUM, ABSOLUTE, SUPREMACY, STRUCTURE/CONTENT, SELF-REFERENCE, PROCESS, PRIMALITY, ANARCHY, CYCLES, MULTIPLICITY, STARTINGNESS  ] stand alone in a series comprising but one number: itself [ UNSAY IT ].

From such an understanding of supremeness we may be able to construct PARADIGMatically a TOT since a TOT is about all supremely beyond which no greater all can be conceived.





CONTINUE
SIGNIFICANT RANDOMNESS
FINDS YOU
BUT UNPREPARED
    It doesn't matter
where or how it happens,
                 it happens
         happens randomly for all you know
        because randomness is necessary
  in a world where human will can be free to act
     but not completely in fact for without the lawfulness of
           law it has no backdrop to windowshop a fashion of freedom,
classy suit for cocktails or funky underdraws
        free to choose what food to eat
  but not whether the body needs it,
                 free not to brood over Truth's nature
      but not free of truthfulness
      or at liberty to defy self-realization's deflection
               steering despite your consent or volunteering,
   nor free of the randomness of Necessity
and the fell necessity of Random's mess.
            For you are not free of the serendipitous event which itself never entirely free of order's never entirely free of necessity forming your bent, reminding it, abjuring and remanding, teases and propels wishes
in new directions as if they wished to be compelled

            nor the random pattern be absolutely random being part of a pattern called 'Random Pattern' in which even the most meaningless chance events altogether form a Form if not altogether informed with meaning, a seeming pattern of randomness like a large random number which can never so completely be disorderly it lacks all relationship of parts for though its randomness may be in the generation of the number but not in its series of digits as you may try to believe or never achieve for such is your life putting off living in its fullness till there's no life left, without clear comprehension some randomness of death however predictable may be but a synchronicity which is coincidence not entirely happenstance to be lacking all significance even in its causation, but however it happens those random events that seem like order awaken the sleeping desire create it from the salvaged bits and pieces of the torn cloth of unlived dreams, weaving slowly a new cloak—like a poet you remember warns of an intolerable shirt of flame no human power can remove

for the randomness is after all your own kind of randomness which fits within the order of your particular life finding you not so entirely disordered you can skirt around any reminder of the shirt, doorbell, or unexpected email, a chance encounter, or a column idly read in a newspaper, the flirtatious wink creating an unexpected sigh, or a phone call ringing in the night, a sermon, a bell tolling ancient memory, a shout, a moan, an insidious comment to break fragile, false contentment, the death in the family galvanizing intent to seek meaning where meaning must be sought if life is to continue, or a thought silently, inhospitably thought it was hardly a thought—mere wisp of fleeting, flitting feather of a flight out of sight on the fenced boundary of beliefs cheep cheep cheeping out a tune for caught in the wind is how you fly over boundary of fence or rail, wall, hill and sky, gravity and its inertia to vow an excuse about loves, lives, lamentations, hesitations, consternations, what you cannot this moment start in to formulate could be formulated for anything you truly need in life as if your life lacked some essential reality not yours for the asking, or taking, or taking back you will not call to it for fear it may reply, "Come, I am here, nothing holds you down so why are you insistently, incessantly holding me back?"






SAINT ANSELM OF CANTERBURY
OPENS A MASSIVE DOOR
FEW WOULD ENTER
New harmonies           
appear in the history
of Truth (an overture)      
changing its course for centuries
for better or worse but for sure,     
mindfully breezy or by fiery force
     millennia perhaps, perhaps ages.             
The Western discovery by way of Socrates  
of a priori truth was one such:  
some truths could be known and proofed just      
by thought alone;                         
perhaps all the most important could about             
the good, the true, the beautiful and essential     
be dutifully amenable to finding out   
if one could but think      
with the right form of mental clout.
St. Anselm, bishop of Canterbury, Kent in England writing his truth in the 11th century Anno Dominum should have been such a turning point, and was, though global history didn't budge from the direction it was going after its encounter with Anselm's attempted a priori proof of a perfect Being called God, yet there are individual, personal histories which alter irrevocably when they encounter it turning that local tide as surely as moons steer waves to shore.

Not that Anselm's argument as framed is beyond criticism or critique. It's what he tried to do that sounds a bell inside a receptive ear while his specific argument not only was looked askance at but the very idea of it, his critics desiring to close the door to even the form of the argument lest it be found true if it was but more carefully worded. But failing that if the phrasing after all can't be redesigned to make it true it nevertheless ought to be true since it's too grand not to be—such is its compelling power which posits a kind of somethingness in the cosmos so unique it can't be imagined not to exist. To merely conceive it in the mind is to know it to truly be.            
Anselm has been superficially viewed as having tried to set forth a proof of God's existence when what he really set forth was the possibility of a supreme a priori kind of argument that if there are ideas with such properties that make them irresistible facts (and there are) because they can not be thought of as lacking truthfulness there is at least one such idea whose logical truthfulness is not only a priori but its very existence as well. Such an existence would lack the possibility of nonexistence.


THE BOOK, THE BIRTHDAY,
BUT THE BOHEMIAN
GETS A BAD RAP REGARDLESS
You tore it from a library book, probably that branch with the lousy hours always closed when you go they deserve it doesn't matter file it away as a curiosity we all do it make note of this, jot down a that, clip an important magazine article the next day's forgotten as sure as what you ate for lunch, or maybe you're cleaning up files tossed it or later it was slipped between the pages of a book like that history of Western philosophy (right in with that favorite sesame chicken recipe) lost the dust jacket what's-her-face famous author had no intention to read but that was the proper place to stick it back of the solitary dog-eared page who was it gave you the book birthday gift? odd day strange stray chance of a dance was it ?
an acquaintance sort of why give you a gift ? random encounter in a fast food restaurant the food was—what can you say—fastfood, had this (used) book under their arm, who are you to them ? never eat at those joints anyway—not that franchise—complete whim right there you were famished dared yourself break your rules get tired of your own rules, okay make a new rule 'Purposely break my rules now and again to show that rules are just rules, not set in stone.'
and you're slumming it's all good the fries are greasy (of course?) only sipped the weak coffee someone asked if they could sit at your plastic tabletop table, sheesh, you hate them like the plastic spoons knew what was coming going to hit you up for change talk your ear off first: his girlfriend, dog, girlfriend's boyfriend secretly his boyfriend, dog again, nipple ring you tried not to look at lack of money could you buy him green tea when he takes a tea bag out his pocket never mind goes for hot water dingy brown sweater, no, pullover carrying the book in his armpit you wind up leaving with under your armpit, must've mentioned your birthday somewhere in the conversation why did he wear that dingy sweater no, pullover ? spot a page badly dog-eared the only reason you opened it at all a text not exactly highlighted marked up by a felt-tip pen garish doodle couldn't take your eyes off forcing you to remember the text torn from another book you had but passing interest close it open it again hear the annoying ringtone inside your head doorbell stuck jangling clack click ding din of wind chime in a coming storm tolling distant church-like bell sublimely for the unsaved dead calling sinners to redress and repentance, random scribble of the unwashed unconscious hellbent to comment on the key phrase of the last sentence of a third paragraph when some emotion (surely yours) unknown and unwashed squirmed, twitched, lost control—no, not unknown. Forgotten.


A GREAT REALM BEYOND THE DOOR
FINDS YOU IMMOBILE
BUT INTENT

    Anselm's own peers
 of the scholastic, religious community
   not particularly impressed stayed aloof,
      of course,
   if to prove the existence of God
     is to give their premier fear
       life: that reason might be able to reproof
   the Magisterium of the Church,
 terrifying thought to stand in that lurch
for anyone in power to have the authority of their pronouncements confirmed or denied by an indisputable fact of logic applied, and
whether Saint Thomas Aquinas actually was soft on Anselm's proof, the official line is he was against it, and I suppose that went far in closing the door to shut it out from further consideration since if the premier doctor of philosophy disses your metaphysics then you have been firmly dismissed.
Not that scholastics take issue with the a priori process except to allow it between the covers of the Bible. Lest we criticize religion as unique in its bias it's no less the case with empirical science, much of which has a few but guarded kind words for philosophy and even less for the a priori method since what amounts to the smug assurances of the magisterium of Empirical Science especially in its materialist expression also wishing to be the keeper of the keys to truth looks unkindly on any competitor. The keys to knowledge it may have but not to truth or wisdom, certainly not to that immaterial reality which it claims it can't investigate though it just as unreasonably claims doesn't exist to even determine if it could be investigated

but as interesting as the history of Anselm's argument might be or his life and times or the Latin original text of his writings, the form of the argument is everything in its springing of the mind to the possibility of a realm of extreme ideas whose rules break the logical rules of existentiality in their monumentality of reality, still it was not your kind of reading material, nothing wrong with philosophy it just seemed irrelevant like asking why something rather than nothing the door thrown open no one was pressing further than its jambs surely not you for the ontological proof remains a curious sideshow in Truth's history a freak of logic to feel repulsion for, even pity that such a thing claimed legitimacy in its checkered life—an odd bastard logic without credible family ties not necessarily a flat out lie what comes to your mind is the image of a malformed fetus they collect in a jar and display for the sensationalist effect in a cabinet of curiosities, a proof of an outrageous claim banished from philosophy relegated to the vagaries of grammatical trickery of which you find no further use or interest, and anyway your coffee's cold. You absolutely hate cold coffee.

Except I found myself staring through its pristine portal out onto a realm of superrational vistas untouched by messy, mundane human thought nor caressed by its unhallowed desires, looking for all the world like it would remain as untouchable and uncaressable as it would remain beyond the grasp of conventional logic, needing an overlogic for its investiture to finally crown it king.
A DINGY SWEATER
AND A SHIVER
THAT WAS MORE THAN THE CHILL
Two,
three,
five years
later you were
just out for a walk

had nothing to do with



eating or restaurants or making rules about rules had nothing to do with anything ?can't say, somebody whispered something to somebody else passing on the right you didn't give them much room refusing to step off the curb, sounded like "insulin" but a first name, guy, which didn't make sense the mind running thru guy names sounding like insulin and there it was lodged in your brain somewhere popped up Hansel no Anselm as in Saint tho you doubt saints are anything but good press for bad religion but the oddest sensation occurred made you shiver thought maybe didn't put on the jacket, the breeze on the edge of chill then a phrase like 'something that than which no bigger can be thought' odd enough you couldn't completely forget felt anxiously significant can't get it out your mind replaying it with a quick armchair exam was your subconscious trying to tell you something about a something that than which then but this gal passes by brushes your sleeve along with the that than which with this handsome plaid pullover really a sweater and whoa the image of that dingy guy in the fast food restaurant dingy pullover makes you aggravated all over again wanted to say (if not then later) why don't you wear plaid you'd look good in plaid you know you would but you wear that dingy brown pullover looks terrible are you looking terrible on purpose ? a laid-back beat-up counterculture look is that it ? but the crazy thing if he'd've worn the plaid you wouldn't have harbored contempt and someone walking past wearing plaid tho you're not against religion or dingy brown pullovers it just looked like he was making a ridiculous statement trying hard to be grungy and colorless rankled you and the sight of the very kind of plaid you were visualizing him wearing brought the contempt back like it never went anywhere and but for that contempt you may never have been shocked into remembering what you forgot that moment of emotion in the fast food joint you couldn't carry past that moment but think it wasn't the dinginess of the brown sweater why would that provoke such a revulsion ? shivering you kept on shivering if just but slightly wasn't the chill air was your excuse but that forgotten emotion gestating silently for years growing developing a heartbeat feeding on the snippets of cast off thoughts and factoids of feelings collected on autopilot and filed away, the file cabinet filled needing more space has an excuse to cast off this and that unused information you know it sounds crazy but some scrap of remark rumor or byword waiting for a situation it can use to make a break into the sunshiny light and warmth of consciousness which is why you're shivering walking a little too fast to get home telling yourself you're cold and it was nightfall and afraid to be alone in the dark.
You eventually find the book in a stack in the bedroom closet books you meant to donate Purple Heart Salvation Army Goodwill didn't matter but you hate throwing out books even bad ones but these weren't that kind but the kind you thought you wanted to read but later unable to find the reason you wanted to.

You spot the book of Western philosophy, take it from the stack.

You open to the dog-earred page and its there.

You remove it.

Next day you donate the whole stack to a little free library somebody'll include in a box on a stick a passerby may or may not take to read or it sits there forever or finally gets tossed but it's not your business anymore.

You eventually return the torn page to the library you stole it from taking with you scotch tape to make amends.

      But not before you read it one more time.