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Page 168

History, politics -- sometimes I don't know if I know
anything. I learned long ago that I don't know
the things I know from newspapers and not always the things
I think I know deep down: A woman who would never leave me
left me; friends who would always be my friends became
less than nothing to me; Cleveland lost the World Series
four straight to the Giants, but my Dad wouldn't take
the $10 he bet me, said he just wanted to teach me that
what you're certain of isn't always so. And yet, the moral of this
is not (I think I know) going to be that living is the process
of learning that one can know nothing, no, because
there are things that I know and know that I know -- for example,
that I am I and you are you, and here we are (or so this page
screams to no one as flames engulf it, but the ashes
will reach you and smudge you, and somehow
you are getting this...).

As for living, it is often the process of bolstering
with rationalizations our knowing things we "know"
the way fans choose a team and know it is the best team;
the way we know our opinions must be truth
because they are ours. (And oddly enough,
once we know how to know, we CAN choose a team
and by our knowing it is best, make it best.
Knowing becomes creating, in the absence of lies.)

It is hard to tell someone the truth (for example,
that you are not a body, but an immortal being),
not because the truth is unknowable or difficult
to experience or recondite, but because it collides
with all that we know that is not so.

Living should be learning how to know,
and must begin by removing the barriers to knowing
and knowing that we know (painful lessons,
these extractions of false knowledge dearer
than eye teeth) -- must begin by learning
how much of what we know we do not know.

Note: I guess this sums up to the idea that what we call "knowing" is actually various higher and lower harmonics of something ("possessing data about" being one not-very-high harmonic).

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