When I was in college, we had a symposium on Wittgenstein. It was then that I learned about ‘Zettel’. I’ve never read it, but my recollection is that it was poetic philosophical fragments that never made it into his other writings. It is with that in mind that I write down various thoughts.

About inside jokes:
Our family has a lot of inside jokes that get repeated often at the dinner table.
Life is an inside joke… Inside jokes for solipsists… Tofu Oysters… Keep the worms hot… Like a rhinestone deer head… or a riff from Aqualung played on the air guitar followed by everyone shouting AFLAC!

About West Wing
I really liked tonight’s West Wing. I forget exactly what Santos said when he announced McGarry’s death. It was something about elections being about more than just the people. I thought it was very good, along with a line from Vinnick saying something similar about it being history that decides. It reflects a thought I often talk about, of when the man makes the times versus when the times make the man.

Then, there were the reflections on mortality, change, etc. “Omnes una manet nox” - “The same night awaits us all”. Very nicely done, talking about the same night that awaits each candidate, as well as that good night which Dylan Thomas urges us not to go gentle into. Josh, quoting Leo, quoting Horace, with perhaps a little tip to Checkov and Uncle Vanya at the same time.

Bartlet reflects on planned obsolesce of both Presidents and mid-sized sedans.

It is all tied together so nicely with “It’s not about left or right, but about doing right”. It almost sounded like Santos was quoting Deval Patrick.

Meanwhile, it is Palm Sunday. Another set of reflections on life, death and doing what you think is right, even though the thought of it is terrifying.

Some of it may be the prospect of moving, but I think there is something else going on as well. At church, as I listened to the reading of The Passion, I thought about other years. Certain years come back to me, times in my life that I’ve felt that I was “standing on the edge of something much too deep”.

There are times that I’ve looked into the abyss and it has been frightening. I’ve been in great pain and not seen a way forward. Then, there are other times that I’ve had a sense of standing on the edge of something much too deep (Hat Tip: Sarah McLaughlin), a sense of enormous changes on the horizon, or perhaps enormous changes at the last minute (Hat Tip: Grace Paley)

As I sat in church, I thought back to other times that I stood at the edge of some unknown enormous changes. Now I got that feeling once again. (Hat Tip: Pink Floyd). Perhaps I am somewhere between Tractatus’ “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” and some philosophical investigation into how we really use words. Whatever it might be, I am sure it will lead to another interesting set of inside jokes.