I knew a journalism professor who enjoyed aphorisms and described his discipline this way: "like a lover, you fall for and then betray your subject". Betrayal was a necessary function in this compact philosophy because, like all bright misanthropes, he saw the transcendent truth in the lives of others, from which hypocrisy and stupidity shield them.
I had a conversation recently which I would like to report with all sympathy to the situation of my 'subject', who understood its possible inauthenticity as well as I did.
I was looking for treasure on this island:
The only thing I found, within the first few minutes of a week of otherwise fruitless searching, was a small chip of flexible metal which turned out to be a cremation tag: it had a number and the address of a crematory in a nearby state. Because I found it between the rocks of a promontory, I knew it must have fallen when the urn was being emptied. I was proud of it and showed it to most of the people I ran into. Incidentally, I spent the day wondering if I had committed a form of grave-robbing.
Eventually someone told me that it probably came from his friend, who had died in a car accident a few towns over from the address on the tag, been cremated, and whose parents had scattered his ashes on the island. We concluded that was probably where it came from, though the island has many visitors, weddings and other functions. I gave it to him, because it would been grotesque not to. In the course of a conversation a few days later he said he had "reflected deeply" on it.
Because of the number of visitors who come to the island (and because calling the island one's 'spirit's home' is repeated by enough of them to make it a joke among workers there), it is perfectly possible that his reflections were concentrated on something which did not come from his friend. It may not have. It probably did.
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