you can't teach understanding,

you can only try to understand.

now this is retrieved from yesterday and i don't know what i was thinking when i wrote that. now it just stands out, the word understanding. i remember once i wrote a poem about my father and understanding and standing under my father, just trying to stand, not understanding him at all, except in a very basic reduction, to a kind of mechanical animal of avarice and greed. that's still my understanding or the understanding that stands under my subsequent understandings. his motives were base, and the fear was that i would never understand and only act out of my own base instincts. but his were not natural animal ones, i don't believe he was or could be a natural animal, and he didn't reflect like some humans would. his were the instincts of an overcivilized predator, who could not understand his better animal instincts latent inside.

 

the power of entering into another’s personality and imaginatively experiencing his feelings. —empathie, adj. 

i don't want to blame my father any longer, but blame comes unbidden i suppose, it can't be suppressed and will only find another route. what is the root of blame? misunderstanding? or perhaps understanding. standing under he that you understand all too well, and are subject to in a lineage beyond the individual, the progenitor, beyond his death.

ha-ha, good morning kid! more soon!