Two books, one I had previously forgotten to mention:
Andre Agassi's autobiography. This is well written in the sense that he manages to make himself come out looking as if he's being honest, while at the same time he comes out looking really good and making others look not so good. And that's pretty much the idea of any autobiography it seems. Or blog, etc. One can't just say it straightforward (I'm wonderful, everyone else sucks!) but that does seem to be the goal. So we come to the conclusion (seemingly on our own) that Brooke Shields is materialistic, selfish, shallow. That Agassi's dad, to whom Andre owes all his success in life, is basically a lunatic. And that despite making a few mistakes, Andre is just this wonderful person who exists to make the lives the others better.

Humorous to hear him try to explain the 'Image is Everything!' quote he's so famous for. Still, other than being almost as vacant ultimately as Brooke and everyone else in his book, he comes across as relatively harmless...

Dragons of the Dwarven Depths by Weis and Hickman: guilty decadent book. All long stories are decadent in the first place. This is 'escapist fiction'. Understand though it's not so much that it's dwarves and dragons and elves that makes it escapist. What really makes it a nice place to escape to is how 2D everyone is. How simple to understand the people are. How relatively straightforward everything is. Good people, bad people. Stark charater flaws. Things are exaggerated and thus so much clearer... With a plot that's badly glued together.

Sturm is honor. Pefect morals. Tanis is the smart guy. Raistlin is a basically a good guy but he's kind of an ass. Clearly a bit morally challenged. Tas is a total airhead. Flint is the stereotypical grumpy dwarf. Caramon is 2D stupid and exists to be taken advantage of by Raistlin. Etc. Each character is clearly not a real person. Just shards of real people. And so they merely survive as 2D evil bears down on them. Is this not really what life is? Or is it maybe exactly what life really isn't? Could it be that this type of thinking is so appealing to people that makes real life such crap? That in real life it's not the existence of evil that's the problem, it's the constant mistaken perception of it. It's that people are constantly seeing it all around them where there's actually none.

Occasionally I think I should set my sights low, hold my nose and try to write such a thing. Was really thinking that the past day or two as some disgusting back stabbing at work has really stressed me out and thus, this is a nice escape. But then later, when I'm less stressed out I'll change my mind. The constant changing of my mind and only having a few moods that desire to write, stops me from writing. Clearly I don't have the continous steady desire in me. And once I've stopped for a while, I don't start again because the stopping part has deeply engraved Failure upon whatever it was I was doing. And so a feeling of certain failure stops me from ever starting up a given project again.

Also the mood for the given story is just gone by the time I feel like coming back to writing again.

My moods change thus I can't stick with any story long enough to get anywhere with it. Is it a flaw in me or the lack of a necessary flaw in me?

A woman at work was going around saying I had a crush on her. I did not. I definitely don't want her to think that. I also don't want that kind of rumor going around, seeing as I'm married, etc. So I've since been erring on the side of being unfriendly, making sure to not smile at her, etc.

And so now she's smearing my work performance. Lying about varioius things. Seeing as I work with 50 some people, you'd think the fact that only one person is smearing me would mean management would be able to figure out the person is full of shit? But no, my management is incredibly stupid. So now what? Get down in the mud and smear back? Just shut up, continue to do more than my part, kiss ass, and say nothing while this person ruins my reputation?

Considering how middle management is, the thing to do is leave somehow. But I have to have worked for a year as a nurse here to be able to transfer. And I have to pay back my college money if I just leave the hospital before then. So I have to stay right here for at least 4 more months. Should I fight back in the meantime? Or will that just make things worse? Maybe it's really just management stirring up the trouble in the first place?

So then from the tick tock back on over to the chop chop for a bit, a while, a life, whatever.

It makes one want to wander around underground with an axe killing goblins.

The problem is people communicating with me that I don't actually speak to. On facebook for example, despite clearly stating that I strongly prefer the phone I still have people just ignoring that and still communicating with me there. A girlfriend from more than ten years ago that I've almost not actually spoken to in a decade occasionally writes me, not entirely sure why. I'll assume just to be nice. We broke up ugly. (Totally her fault and absolutely no way around that.) It's nice that we're on good terms now. I guess it's nice the positive sentiment of her facebook messages. But... she brings up veganism to me, notifying me of something happening like two hours away, (which is as good as it gets where I live, but useless to me.) I ask if she's interested in veganism. She isn't. End of long spiel she says: "Maybe you can send me some vegan recipes? :)"

I'm not much of a cook and I seriously don't want to do recipes with anyone. How can I communicate this via typing with someone I've virtually not spoken to in a decade without potentially hurting her feelings? I don't know how exactly and so I spend days putting it off, being preoccupied by this pretty useless conversation with someone who's ignoring what I've clearly stated in my status and profound saying or whatever, that I strongly prefer the phone. This is another of the endless people who won't use the phone of course. I'm stuck trying to communicate via this method where miscommunication is so highly likely. Face to face this would be nothing to communicate. It would take a second and would be forgotten. Instead I'm stuck with this bit of crap in my head for days on end, this useless communication (although the positive sentiment from someone who had treated me so shitty is nice) taking up my life ultimately. My life ultimately because one after another follows. This sort of thing over and over again with people who won't actually speak to me, whom yet I'm so worried that through miscommunication I'll manage to offend.

After being stuck at this point and seeing no way forward for quite a while, I read that book, and finally decided to just be direct with some people. In return I was told by one to 'fuck off. I'm a sociopath.' (Although that one seems to think everyone's a sociopath, so it doesn't mean much.)

So, perhaps I should just delete my facebook account. That too will offend people. But it will be a short term thing as opposed to years and years of this, my life passing me by, with this absurd stupidity. Being dragged into unhealthy ways of interacting which are seriously ruining my life. Do I owe it to anyone to be forever dragged into such arrangements with people who refuse to even occasionally use the phone?

I really don't think so. And I would absolutely prefer to just not have anything at all to do with someone than to only communicate via email, etc. Better of course would be to interact in a more healthy way, but if people won't do that, they hardly have any basis for villifying me when I say goodbye and wish them the best. (But that again, is the exception I guess. Most people aren't so tied into seeing themselves as the perpetual victim.)

It is a sort of social anxiety perhaps that I've developed that I don't want to communicate via this medium anymore (with people whom absolutely won't communicate any other way) but it is at the same time highly twisted on their part that they're like this. And that's a huge part of what's causing the anxiety on my part. The understanding of these things. That the whole communication has such a basis in fear.

It doesn't have to be based on fear of course. It's possible for it to be a basically healthy thing. But I know damm well it's not in the case of this past gf for example. And many others.

I know it's fear and I see the bigger picture. I see how it all connects (albeit vaguely). And it ultimately drives me bonkers. Drives and drives me bonkers, on and on. And finally I tell someone please use the phone, or just have a nice life, and I'm a sociopath.

So of course I can't win. This is the one thing I know. No matter what, I lose. The problem being of course, trying to care about people who are utterly selfish. Of course I lose. In the same way, I'm so worried about saying something to offend old gf.

..but it is maybe much ado about not much really. I mostly started up this unhealthy communications with people far away I've never met. I just won't do so in the future.

And it is a sort of neurotic behavior on my part. Two types of people: those making other people's lives hell and those making their own. So I'm definitely the latter. And it's just not a good way for me to communicate.

My wife, feh, she has to do almost all of her communicating at work via email. I think that would drive me bonkers. She handles it way better than most but she is about driven bonkers presently.

The other thing of it is, is that I strongly desire to be a part of an actual community. I strongly desire more interaction with thoughtful people. And in the 'real world' that just isn't happening.

And so, I turned to the internet, where I ran into a whole bunch of people who unfortunately communicate in unhealthy ways. So I've got either ....'solitude' or unhealthy unfulfilling miscommunication. I've spent the last 10 years trying to avoid 'solitude', recognizing that such personal solutions really are simply not the best way forward. And instead I've been having unhealthy unfulfilling miscommunications.

I'm better off with 'solitude', if the choice is one or the other.

I say 'solitude' with reference to Robert Johnson claiming in Heaven and Earth that the cure for loneliness is solitude. I think it sort of sounds like crap. Or at least not well explained. It is possible to not mind the state of my life though. It's not really that lonely. I just had wanted so much more.

It's mostly a matter of forgetting what I wanted. Forgetting what should be.

Flute dimensions spreadsheet:
http://www.cwo.com/~ph_kosel/flutomat.html

My past experiment with running a very long distance once a week may have been causing me to slowly run faster, but it seems to have been awful for my joints. Now I'm trying to run almost everyday. Mixing up my speed/intensity from day to day. Almost always on a sturdy treadmill with at least a 5% incline. When I go out on the concrete my right knee isn't liking it. I'm trying to strengthen my legs and work into this gradually. Hopefully my knee will strengthen up.

I need to aim for 45 minutes of aerobic exercise on average. Also need to get into more of a habit of drinking tea, wine, consistently getting adequate vitamin D, consistently getting enough omega 3's. And making more friends. Except for the omega 3's and perhaps the vitamin D, I can immediately notice feeling slightly better when I do these other things.

Otherwise I'm apparently a really healthy person without hardly trying to be.

I hate it when people use their blogs to speak in a passive aggressive fashion to someone instead of just directly speaking to them. For that matter I hate it when someone will throw hate, etc via email (cowards) instead of having enough ethics to actually speak to the person. What I'm about to write is not an attempt to say something ugly to anyone, it's for my own personal purposes only. When I have something to say to someone, I say it directly to them. If I have something negative to say and yet they won't even speak to me on the phone, then they basically don't exist anyway. I want nothing to do with any retarded email wars. In fact I want nothing period to do with anyone who only communicates via written text online. Anyone who thinks that's a proper way to (solely) communicate is behaving in a completely dysfunctional manner. Anyone who then acts all offended when their victim has had enough is being perfectly selfish; too concerned solely about themselves to notice the harm they're causing to others.

Of course some people are so bad off they simply can't take the feelings of others into account. (All the more so through the miscommunication which is the rule of email, etc.) And I do feel for such people. But if said people refuse to actually communicate there is certainly nothing I can do about that. I can't just pop into their heads telepathically to make up for all they're refusing to do.

Anyone who's taking part in discussion boards, blog comment sections, and email to a great extent, without actually speaking to the people their spending so much time on, is doing it woefully wrong. And I'm sorry, genuinely sorry for all the people who are continuing to fuck it up so bad.

Anyway, a few years ago I had to babysit a 14 year old autistic boy. I say boy, although when I was 14 I was not a boy. I was grown up by 14. But anyway this was definitely some sort of boy.

His father had recently jumped out a window because the boy had driven him mad. This was the story anyway, that he had literally just finally screamed and literally ran across the room and right out the window thus killing himself. During the evening I had to take care of him, he threw a cup of pee on me. And not with anger, but with a demonical giggle.

At one point in the evening though, I let him surf the internet. And he knew to do things online that I didn't know how to do. So, he was both an idiot and in some ways quite intelligent. Which normally is something I really like; as we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and in order to be really really good at something, something else is going to have to give...

But in this case the result was a monster. He had absolutely no concept of the feelings of other people. And when you tried to tell him he was wrong about anything he simply ignored you. You see, ultimately, he was utterly closeminded. He could never be wrong. And he's throwing cups of pee on people he's just met and laughing while at the same time able to surf the web better than me.

And so, I sat there beside him, to make sure he didn't hurt himself or someone else, while he sat there with a slightly empty look in his eye, flying all over the internet. And whenever I've interacted with someone online since who seemed 'a tad bit off' who refused to actually speak to me, I've remembered that 14 year old autistic boy, sitting there, flying all over the internet with a slightly vacant look in his eye.

Where will that boy be in 20 years? He'll probably have enough technical skills that for a while he'll manage to hold down a job. Then he'll throw a cup of pee on someone and when they fire him scream about how they're all sociopaths. He'll get another job and the same will happen. And eventually he'll be permanently unemployed, living on disability, surfing the internet, and screaming about how everyone in the whole world is a sociopath. All the while refusing to even speak to the people who try to help him. Unless they're female. In which case he'll try to get in their pants. And he'll be so good at surfing the web, he'll probably find some woman that's so lonely and terrified of any normal man, some woman that can only be with a guy that seems so pitiful she doesn't feel threatened of him, that he probably will find a woman.

And he'll sit there in his dump of a house and scream about how unfair it is. Scream about how awful the world is, and except for the poontang, he'll reject anyone else who offers help. Refuse to even speak to anyone else. And of course, when such people eventually give up and say goodbye, he'll of course then scream that they too were sociopaths.

And imagine again, that 14 year old, throwing pee on people and laughing, a slightly vacant, kind of scary, empty look in his eye, flying all over the web with ease.

And despite it all, here I am, compelled by my over-I, by the ethical laws my I, my ego, has set for me, to still attempt to help such demons that I find online. I've spent my life being Dostoevsky's Idiot, being too good for this world, pushing myself to the edge.

But I'm not going to go jump out any windows.

101 is not very original. A short piano piece in just intonation. In c major. I had Joanna run through a number of other tunings while I had to say what she was in. Like going from 12TET to supposedly Bach's well temperament but I don't trust HG piano. According to this:
http://www.larips.com/
the only different note was b. But I was able to tell TET from whatever WT HG piano was using. The problem is that I could tell HG just intonation from an imported (identical) just intonation scala file. The bigger problem is that in c major the differences in all these things are minimized.

Unfortunately I can't say that JI matters at all here. This song is so totally lacking in dissonance such that the steady dissonance of 12TET maybe helps it.

100 is divided by 3, 4 and 5. It really doesn't sound good. The best part is the lack of a fade for the sudden jump to 99.

99 is divided by 6 the same as 91 and they have the same flavor... although I ended up sticking one of the same instruments in... Yet, just messing around I stuck that scale on 101 and it also had the same flavor. A sort of mystical feel. I like it.

98 and 95 are divided by 7. In a way both highly dissonant and yet I like them both. Especially 98. HG piano doesn't sound very good in 95. Seems like any note works. Which makes for very easy song writing. And also makes it easy to stick a ton of tracks together.

97 is divided by 10. I love it. Maybe because it's similar to a 12TET minor scale? 6/5, 7/5, etc minor thirds... Need to try it again.

96 is divided by 9 and the majority of notes will just sound horribly out of tune. So few notes are left that it's bland.

94 is divided by 8 and maybe is just an awful song. Have to try again.

I like 6, 7 and 10 more than 12TET. Well temperament, just intonation, pythagorean, etc, meh, slight enough adjustments that even with being able to generally correctly guess what something is, it's difficult to say how much I really care. I think it may be hitting my subconscious though. Finally my ears change from day to day. One day the difference is huge and such a breath of fresh air. Other days, who cares? Like the episode of red dwarf that I was told about. It does amount to that unfortunately. But it's better than any alternative I'm aware of.

A large SUV swerved into my car today knocking my off the road and causing at least 4300 dollars worth of damage. The young guy begged me not to call the police. He gave me his rolex which he says is worth 7000 dollars as collateral (I didn't ask for it, he offered it.) The whole ordeal just brings home again how fucked our society is, such that there's nothing for it but that extreme suspicion and distrust must constantly dictate our behavior. Of course I didn't call the police though and am trusting that he'll show up in the parking lot with 4300 dollars in cash on friday...

Which has my wife bringing up every possible negative scenario she can think of and trying to lecture me on the need to be completely untrusting of everyone.

---

For what it's worth I've written 6 'songs' in the last week and just finished my 100th 'song'. I think 97 is my alltime favorite. Not sure what conclusions I can draw from my fundamental scale experiments yet though.

8/7, 9/7, 10/7, 11/7, 12/7, 13/7, 14/7 can actually work just fine. Not so awfully discordant as I thought it might be. Not at all really. I suppose 8/7ths is still relatively low whole numbers. I already knew I prefer 6/5 instead of 5/4... I think I need to do them all on the same instrument to more safely draw conclusions... But homegrown piano sounds bad enough that I'm not going to use it. Have to buy something... Can't buy anything till I see if this guy shows up with the 4300 dollars CASH, lol. I guess next I'll write something emphasizing thirds in meantone comma on homegrown piano, as for someone unknown reason that one sounds OK, as if there were a very few scales for which he didn't just pitch shift everything from a single note.

Two books:

How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care) by Ross Duffin.
Duffin mostly advocates bringing the thirds a little less out of tune, as they are so far out of tune in 12TET. That would mean something like quarter comma meantone. He does say the best tuning depends on the song.

Actually this article here compares Duffin and Isacoff's books and I mainly agree with it.
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2007/01/the_tuning_tide_turns.html

Evening in the Palace of Reason by James R. Gaines.
Sort of biography of JS Bach and Frederick the Great. Bach kept making tons of music because of his faith in god. He actually wasn't all that popular at the time. The galant style was more popular, which seems to mean lighthearted, fluffy, etc. Bach was darker, and more profound. And his counterpoint, lots of stuff happening at the same time, instead of a single melody line. People supposedly found that too serious. So the author says. Bach was just about forgotten until long after his death. Some of his greatest works were barely played even once until decades and even up to a century later.

It is hard to imagine putting the effort into writing all that music, knowing it might only get played a single time. Or that you'll send the sheet music to Frederick The Great (some of your best work ever) who's just going to throw it aside and never listen to it even once. It would seem to take something like faith in a god, and a belief that your music was written for the glory of god, to bother continuing to compose so much. To work so hard at it. If not that exactly, something else about as mystical.

And that's it then. I've told a number of people to either communicate by using the phone or just go away, basically. I may not have come across as very nice but I cannot think of any way to sound nice about it. If there was anything else to do to manage to sound nice that I could have thought of (along with being world record good even as it's killing me) I would have done it.

So the phone: I don't think that's asking so much really. Really it's not asking hardly anything at all. And so then, these people I communicated online to for years without ever actually speaking to, how many do you think simply picked up the phone and chose to be a real actual human being?

Try zero. And ask yourself, what kind of person will spend endless hours communicating online with someone that they won't even once speak to on the phone for even a few minutes?

People with issues clearly. And although it appears to be disgusting indifference. Although it appears to be postindustrial living, (so easily dropping people). And it appears to show a complete lack of empathy. And it appears to be dishonest (communicating online with someone you don't actually think enough of to actually speak to). I try, to somehow just leave it at fear. Fear which has overwhelmed people. And of course being a weak, fearfilled person means you cannot show compassion for others. Such people can only be indifferent, or worse.

And it's no good feeling frustration that just about everyone is so well assimilated (thanks to their fear.) To not be assimilated is generally to be dead. Literally. It's no good being frustrated with those who aren't dead. So all these people are owned by Fear. The personal muppets of Fear.

And finally I've never used this blog with much concern for how I appeared. It should have always been a given that this gives a warped picture of me. And it's always been a given that anyone who knows me through this, is probably going to run in the other direction in fear. Occasionally I've allowed a tiny bit of hope that a person or two maybe was intelligent enough to manage better. But with one exception, all have failed. And that's OK.

The only people who know me through this blog, did so exactly because they expressed great unhappiness and it's a matter of my ethical laws (the same ones which would have meant immediately picking up the phone to speak to someone I had communicated online with for years) that I respond to people in distress. I saw them in distress and had no choice in the matter.

Perhaps though, when the need to follow my ethics, exactly when it does not appear at all to coincide with my own self interest. Perhaps I need to think harder at such times, instead of usually being kind of fatalistic. I'm fatalistic exactly because I know I'm almost certainly going to pay one way or another for my kindness. But perhaps at the same time whatever altruistic act I then perform isn't thought out well enough...

...mmm no, not really. Being openminded, I persecute myself. Always looking for flaws. But here, at least, there isn't one. It's more just that there's nothing to be done. I do the right thing, knowing it will do no good and will only hurt me, but there really isn't anything else that can be done. Over and over, it's hopeless. You reach out to people and they respond, "Don't pity me!" Or with suspicion. Or anyway, basically you're not allowed to actually do anything helpful for them anyway as to actually do anything would go against social norms. (I'm married!) Nuclear families. Post-industrial living. Fear of any action that even looks vaguely gay. Simply just fear really. Fear that both stops people from giving compassion and ever receiving any compassion. Fear that keeps people isolated. And makes it all basically hopeless. And thus the only solutions are completely personal solutions. Learning to not mind the established order.

-

Books I've read lately:
The Tyranny of Email: Nothing actually stupendous in it. Just mirrors actually what I've been thinking increasingly for the last decade. Been thinking it but trying so hard to be understanding to all these people who will only communicate online because they're so overwhelmed by fear... Decided I'm just encouraging something harmful, for everyone involved, finally, as a result of reading this. So, life changing book.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: Excellent writing. Excellent insights on slavery that reach far beyond actual slavery in my opinion. Best book I've ever read on this issue. I'm wondering if instead of my crude attempts at depicting a Dante type hell, I should be going more in this direction here...

Temperament by Stuart Isacoff: Smirky 12TET polemic. Still useful. In trying to decide whether or not one should use TET (not just 12, by TET in general). I had decided that one might as well just use TET. That art is ultimately about symbols. To complain about TET is like complaining about seeing a zipper of a Dr. Who monters. As long as the symbolization is made it really doesn't matter... And then I finally slept well after a long bout with insomnia. And suddenly music just sounded so much better. And I listened to my pythagorean song and the tuning gave it so much more... So I still don't really know. It does seem that laziness played a huge role in eventually just deciding on TET. And that with today's technology, any thinking composer would be questioning it and experimenting with other tunings.

Heaven and Earth by Robert Johnson: (Haven't finished this one and not sure I will.)Jung disciple. At first I liked it but the language is getting so vague. I agree some mysticism is necessary but this guy just personally got extremely lucky. And then after the fact attributes all that luck to some divine power. That is incredibly annoying to me. (People don't normally literally find a suitcase full of money sitting in their hotel room given as charity by a crook so that they're able to continue their studies at the newly opened Jungian institute.) It's always incredibly annoying to hear the few lucky people giving what amounts to motivational speeches. They like to pretend something other than luck had anything to do with it. Johnson thought he was just following his 'thin threads'. And apparently if we all did the same we'd all be so happy. Bullshit. You got lucky. Extremely lucky. If 'following your thin threads' had led you to being stuck working at mickie D's I bet you wouldn't be going on about following your thin threads. And the majority of people who act like you did, (commune new age, wandering to a foreign land without a penny, etc) it doesn't work out so well for at all. Ultimately you're combining some wise insights about modern society with stuff that sounds like someone stuck a blender in your ear.

But, I understand, for a thinking man, finding a way to keep some mysticism is difficult to do... To believe that 'religion/spirituality,etc' is within our dreams, is for example one road forward, I suppose... But Johnson really it seems is so much strengthening his mysticism just through the incredible luck he's personally had. And that is nauseating BS.

How Much Money Do You Make?

"How much money do you make?"

In 'utopia', this is at worst an entirely innocent question. A bit of mild curiousity. Even better, if you don't make much, the utopianist now knows that he should keep an eye open to the possibility of offering you any help you might need.

You make a lot? Perhaps you own a lot of neat toys and have a cool house to invite people over to for parties and so on.

If nothing else it's just a bit of information. People who do such and such job make good money. Perhaps I should look into a career change?

In dystopia this is a wildly inappropriate question. Why? Because if the person doesn't make as much money as the questioner, the questioner will then judge them as beneath them, reducing their interaction to an incredibly crude materialistic competition. And if the person makes more than the questioner, the questioner will be jealous and who knows? possibly try to rob them?

Really those are The Reasons it's an inappropriate question to ask in this world. In this dystopia. Although if you ask someone in this dystopia why it's an inappropriate question, chances are very good they won't be able to say other than it's just inappropriate. Or 'it's private!' They don't even hardly really know why. They just know that you ask, and they feel fear. They feel offended by your invasiveness.

The default is fear, don't you know that?

It's private!

"What do you do for a living?"

A bit of small talk? A way to break the ice at a party? As often as not considered the same as asking how much money someone makes. Again, the default is fear. Stay away! Keep your interactions meaningless. Talk about the fucking weather. Make a stupid joke. You're not supposed to be collecting information you could use against the person. Just don't even ask questions! Just fucking sit there and shut up. Or, 'we've certainly been having nice weather lately.'

'Oh, why yes we have, haven't we?' (SCREEEEEEECCH!! THIS IS FEAR! THIS IS THE DYSTOPIA. YOU ARE A POSSIBLE ENEMY. Perhaps over the course of some very long time span I'll quit considering you an enemy. If I'm single and you stick your penis in me. Otherwise, really no need to take any chances.)

"The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unnutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight of hearing."

"Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others."

"It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,-a mistake, accident, or want of power,-are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when censured for it? Then he is guilty of impudence,-one of the greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty. Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptouos, and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does he, while ploughing, break a plough,-or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped."

"I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason."