Too much of my life has been spent trying to get back into things that I've outgrown and can no more re-inhabit than a butterfly can re-enter its chrysalis. Cases in point being my trying to continue in a masters program at the same university from which I'd got my Bachelor's; and my trying to continue in the tutelage of Dr. Chanida. At the end of today's session I said (a propos of what it really doesn't matter), "What you have just said to me is ridiculous, false, and judgemental. Reflect on that and be prepared to discuss at our next meeting." She said she would.

'Tanyrate, I've been thinking about formulating an ethic for myself. After several false starts, I've begun to realize that most of what I believe in are negatives--at least from a putative female perspective (why not?). After the "Big Bang" of positive caring, reverence and deference for (1) the sick and afflicted (not, of course, for those creatures who afflict themselves; not, that is to say, for neurotic women); and for (2) children (magna reverentia, as I like to say, pueris debetur) and the young of all species-not-evil-by-nature--baby elephants being notably adorable; and for most kinds of animals--after that gush of positivity--then a deliberate and detached cooling, hostility even, to the other-directed tenets of prevailing, particularly Christian, ethics: Most especially I do not believe in the self-congratulatory, self-regarding (masquerading as altruistic) Christian ethic of "Love" and "Forgiveness." "Get off us," I like to say, "with your intrusive, who-needs-it? Caritas. Let's have a little respect from you, liking, appreciation, understanding, willingness to let be, disinterested friendliness. And who cares what you forgive?--as long as you don't go around forgiving (for them) crimes and outrages against innocents.

Coming back from lunch through the grounds of the Iolani Palace, I saw a contingent (a couple of dozen) of what appeared to be young Japanese sailors, in white summer ducks, strolling about taking pictures of the palace and the banyan trees, their uniforms sparkling, tight around their bottoms in way that U.S. naval uniforms have not been for twenty years: rather startling, charming and funny.