I waste a lot of time trying to remember what I was just about to say. But since what I “forgot” was never said, what is it I’m trying to “remember”? This problem bothered Saint Augustine, too.

“What about the time when the memory itself has lost something as happens when we forget and seek to recall? Where after all do we look but in the memory itself? And if we’re shown the wrong thing, we reject it until we encounter what we were looking for and when we do encounter it, we say, ‘That’s it.’ We wouldn’t say that unless we recognize the thing, and we wouldn’t recognize it unless we remembered it.”—The Confession (Sarah Rudin’s translation)

WHAT DID I FORGET JUST NOW?

What did I “forget” just now
when I “forgot” what I was going to say?
Ah! I’ve got it. I remember now!
But how can I be sure that what I’ve got
is what I only almost thought?
Actually, what I remember now
doesn’t feel the same. The same as what?

There’s nothing to a thought, so what’s to feel?
Yet I can almost sense what I forgot
before it quite became a thought.

It’s like a fish I hooked and fought but lost.
I never saw it, but, when it was gone,
I had a sense within my wrists and arms
of what it was I almost caught.

This poem mocks both the scientists who think their intelligence entitles them to do as they please, and the barbarians who think their guns entitle them to do the same. Neither of them recognize their limitations, but as Dirty Harry Callahan (in Magnum Force, 1973) observed, “A man has got to know his limitations.”

THE AGE OF SELF-RELIANCE

Dear Diary: Today it all begins—
the Age of Self-Reliance!
No more taboos! Mankind is free 
(“Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free”)—
to do whatever in the name of Science!

Friends of mine are planning to create
babies a la mode
by altering their genetic code.

Others say when they’ve combined
enough computers they will have a mind
far better than our natural kind.

Still others plan to move to Mars—
and live forever, harvesting
replacement parts from infants grown in jars.

Me? I’m going to make myself into
a superhero with a mask and cape
who instantly can change his . . Whoa, what’s this?

Good grief! Some men with guns have come in here. 
They’re saying we will do
what they decide we should. It’s clear
that reasoning with them won’t do much good.
I can’t believe how dumb they are.

Above is Paul Manship’s sculpture Prometheus Unbound. He is delivering fire to humanity as he presides over the skaters at Rockefeller Center. The subtitle of Mary Shelly’s book about the mad scientist, Frankenstein, is The Modern Prometheus. 

THE MIND

Birds, bees, termites, ants, and molds
taken singly are brainless things,
but when they come together with their kind,
they act as if directed by a mind.

We, however, lose our minds in crowds,
grow drunkenly ambitious, start to build
stairways to the stars, or try to kill
our neighbors, pillage stores, set fire to cars.

Solitude is no solution though.
A mountain man’s a crowd of one,
who follows his uncontradicted will, 
as mindless as an ant without a hill.

Our minds are fragile, easily destroyed
by noise or silence, griefs or celebrations.
For minds to flourish, they must be employed
regularly in rambling conversations.

Below iis a conversation between men called “The Long Story” by William Sidney Mount.

And here is a painting of a conversation between two women called “Conversation” by the twentieth century painter Milton Avery.

Thomas Traherne: “The world is best enjoyed and most immediately while we converse blessed and wisely with men.”

Jonathan Edwards: “The being of society, as such, is conversation.”

Michael Oakeshott: “Learning to be human is learning to participate in the conversation of mankind.”