Concerning the history of ideas

Lewis once again hits the nail on the head:

Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.

- C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, ch. 1

I think the folks here at school need to make this the motto for the humanities program.

Fun fact: I'm reading a library copy of the book, and these lines are underlined and starred in this copy. Apparently someone else liked what Lewis had to say, too. (There's a parallel about the universality of human thought in that somewhere...)

Ownership

From The Grapes of Wrath, which I'm reading for school:

...It's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, and died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

What do we mean when we say we own something? The word has different shades of meaning. We say we "own" our clothes, by which we mean they are our property. But we also say we "own" someone as a friend, by which we mean we acknowledge the relationship, not that we possess them. What makes something our property? A book may sit on your shelf, but can you really say it's yours until you've read it and slipped bookmarks in the folds or dog-eared the pages or stuck sticky notes to favorite paragraphs or added notes in the margins or whatever you do with books—in other words, until you've made it yours by spending time with it and letting part of yourself become involved in it? The relationship makes it yours, not the purchase.

In the library--

In the library reading
a journal of poems
I found much to be
dismayed at, a little
to give pleasure, for
in those I read were some
laced with crudities, some
effusing nothings, a few
full and firm and sweet
like the first ripe apples in summer,
none a satisfying meal. But
among the readers' letters
someone quoted Frost, saying
poetry should tell of griefs,
not grievances. At that
I rose and left, for here
at last was sustenance,
and I knew
it was enough.