“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” — Proverbs 26:11

“As members of the flock return to their Bible, so sheep are herded together by dogs.” — S. Laffitte

Another lifetime ago, Sophie Laffitte (author of Chekhov 1860-1904) told me that Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin, the historically important 19th-century Russian journalist, recorded Anton (of The Cherry Orchard…and so much more) as saying:

“In life there are no clear-cut consequences or reasons; in it everything is mixed up together; the important and the paltry, the great and the base, the tragic and the ridiculous. One is hypnotized and enslaved by routine and cannot manage to break away from it. What are needed are new forms, new ones.”

That sounds very much like Beckett’s “habit is a great deadener” (as per Vladimir in Godot).

Proust asserts that we are creatures of habit, but underscores that a germ of salvation is offered by involuntary memory, or apprehension in the absence of habit, awareness of the unfamiliar. The madeleine experience, memory independent of will.

Blah, blah, blah. Sound yourself deeply, to see if you’re capable of such a Joycean epiphany…such a Proustian moment.

For all the activists’ claims and declarations –each of them– I can only echo Beckett’s Hamm (from his play Endgame): “Ah that’s a good one.”

One of Dr. Chekhov’s professors of medicine once offered up an aphorism that seems apt here: “If for some disease a great many different remedies are proposed, then it means that the disease is incurable.”

To stimulate thought along these lines, I (sort of) close (the coffin I share at present) with the following from hip Harper’s:

“Energy, in megawatt hours, saved over thirty-five years by a bicycle rider who does not drive a car: 109. Portion of those savings that will be used up over the extra years the biker will live: 9/10.”

If you think I may be wrong above, perhaps you should check for “epiphanies” vis-a-vis Derrick Jensen’s (two volumes of ) Endgame. And then contact me. He presents one seemingly will-less, singular remedy for resistance, some say.

Richard Oxman, rmoxman@yahoo.com, has recently discovered a bloodline which appears to connect him directly with Anton Chekhov. Stay posted. The most updated versions of his work appear at www.oxtogrind.org.