The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is incarnation. Here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual. Here the past and future are conquered and reconciled.
Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-mooned abysses of night, I have lived o'er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight.
When a man comes to me, I accept him at his best, not at his worst. Why make so much ado? When a man washes his hands before paying a visit, and you receive him in that clean state, you do not thereby stand surety for his always having been clean in the past.
One must be willing to stand alone - in the unknown, with no reference to authority or the past or any of one's conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility.
Any time you lose a few in a row, you have to hit reset and come back tomorrow and do the best you can to forget about how the past series went. It's frustrating. Individually it's frustrating. I'm trying to figure it out. And I know as a team, it sucks losing a few in a row any time. So you know, we'll snap out of it.
It's easy to identify many investment managers with great recent records. But past results, though important, do not suffice when prospective performance is being judged. How the record has been achieved is crucial.
Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.
I think there's an element in Milady where she sees her own innocence in D'Artagnan. In the very beginning, she's using him in a pretty cynical way. When she gets to know him, she sees qualities in him that she recognizes and it's almost like trying to remake the past, but of course, it doesn't work.
But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?
O my good lord, that comfort comes too late,
'Tis like a pardon after execution.
That gentle physic, given in time, had cured me;
But now I am past all comforts here but prayers.