In the dream/nightmare, I was back trapped doing social work, responding as before to the worst cases, interviewing the vilest of people, comforting the most wounded of psyches and buried under a never ending stack of paperwork. Whichever way I turned, there was no way out. It was a lot like my life of two years ago...

The back of the brain must have been recalling old experiences, as when I went to sleep last night I was upset because nothing new had developed on the writing front, and as my money situation is abysmal, I'll probably have to take the next social work gig offered. Not something I want to do, and something my dreaming latched onto and ran with.

Later, during breakfast, Aristotle came up as the coffee creamer came down (Nescafe French Vanilla...the crack,) splashing

"Happiness is the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life according them scope."

through both my joe and my Jody.

Hey, I thought that last bit was pretty clever.

Lest you think I'm some kind of learned, classical genius -- and the content of this website should thoroughly dissuade you of that -- I thought the quote was from Ovid and, for the life of me, couldn't grok how it ended, the "affording them scope" part being on the tip of my tongue but never venturing any further forward. Brain wracked also proving useless, I stumbled over to computer and went on a Google search for the whole thing, realizing somewhere along the line that the quote was once the featured title of an episode of Babylon 5.(Classical Genius, no. Classical Geek, yes.)

In looking the quote up, and realizing I'd been 300 years late, I found a pile of other, equally cool quotes by Aristotle, stuff I only half remembered from reading Politics and The Poetics.

Okay, quarter remembered.

Tenth. I only remember a tenth of it. And then only of Poetics because there probably was something good on TV which took me away from reading more The A-Man's (as I like to call him. It's okay. I've spilled coffee on his treatise) stuff.

As an aside, for any aspiring writers out there, you really should read Poetics from cover to cover. Aristotle is the father of modern story structure and godfather of the screenplay. Consider Aristotle wrote:

"..[Let us now discuss the proper structure of the Plot, since this is the first and most important thing…[Plot] is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.

in 350 BCE, folks. The formalization of story construction is that older than the Greek version of the Old Testament.

But back to those other quotes.

Here are some cool ones I came across (along side my snarky commentary)

One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

(That's what Prozac is for.)

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.

(Drugs. It's always drugs.)

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

(I call this one the "No Cheney Exception.")

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

(I wonder if they had speed traps in ancient Greece?)

It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.

(No, you don't say.)

In light of the recent suspension of Habeus Corpus, this one seemed apt:

A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange...Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

As I said though, the Aristotelian quote that had the most impact was the one that arrived after the bad dream had already fled. In trying to measure myself as a man, in trying to distill down the essence of what I've been doing with and wanting from my life, be it through subconscious dreaming, active reading, or pensive pondering, and thus provide a fairly simple but far from simplistic summary of all my intents, a little bit of coffee, creamer and 2300 year old wisdom put it together best.

Why was I three thousand miles from where I grew up?

The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life according them scope.

What prompted me, for so many years, to wade into familial dysfunctions and pound some semblance of order, dignity and rightness into the proceedings?

The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life according them scope.

Why now am I so fixated on one thing to the exclusion of so many others?

The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life according them scope.

My life has been about, and remains, I think perhaps even obsessively so, utilizing my talents and skills in environments that challenge them to the utmost. That otherwise force the best from me or beat me down in the process. When I'm not there, when there's no scope to what I'm doing and the way seems so blocked, then I get incredibly frustrated, restless, and even mad.

But when the challenge is excellent...