This is the problem that people have with science - it takes what is natural, beautiful and inexplicable and (apparently) reduces it to a list of sober, brief statements. L and I held romance above our heads, her hand gripping one end, mine the other, and on the count of three we smashed it an infinite number of times against the ground until it gave up all its mystery. The light of reason seems to shine too brightly on the bloodied edges, and people are disgusted.
Scientists have been accused since time immemorial of tearing away what is significant and replacing it with their pragmatism. They plucked the earth from the centre of the universe and relegated it to the margins; they dragged man away from God's right hand and put him in with the animals; they told him that he no longer even has dominion over his own thoughts.
The vast space roamed by a raging, volatile God has been snipped away at by the sharp tools of scientific reason. Like an endangered animal, his habitat has been decimated year-on-year, and soon there will be nowhere left to hide. Science will catch him in its net and drag him, the dazzle of a trillion flashbulbs perforating the divine, agonised retina, into the laboratory.
When L, her beautiful, serious face belyinng the depth of her thought processes, unsheathes the bright scalpel of her intellect - I would kill to sit at its controls, even for an hour - then another square of God's territory is handed over to the freezing arts of logic, inference and falsifiability.
If L has succeeded in contaminating a square of land by writing her list of general principles, then I might steal a fraction of one by stating what thoughts or ideas are specific to her. This is not the way to do science - it normally proceeds by the accumulation of specific examples which demonstrate an overarching thesis. L went backwards, expressing general ideas firstly. Now it is time to state the case for L alone - her principLes, if you will excuse the word.
- L delivers extended romantic gestures without even realising it; burning her ambitions to rubble at my stake such is her determination to stay up all night. I realise now that ERGs require an explanation or an insight - you don't have to explain that you are staying up all night, because I already realise (insight or comprehension) as much. With explanation, insight or comprehension, we are presented with an ERG.
- Furthermore, L exemplifies the nature of sacrifice that we discussed previously. Simple romantic gestures, as stated, require none of the three lights mentioned to understand them.
- It is possible to strip simple (non-romantic) gestures of their sentiment due to improper, harsh language. I told L that I'd sooner see her go to sleep than think of her impossibly shattered body slumping over the keyboard. She (through tiredness or otherwise) misinterpreted this, and concluded I'd rather not speak to her at all.
- Sometimes I have to sit and deliberate for a while before I'm capable of saying (or writing) words that are both mutually comprehensible and represent things (feelings, ideas) which cannot be properly expressed. L does not, however, have to think, such is her connection with her own romantic self, and with the simple object she directs herself at.
