[Wheat]

I don't know why but last week I looked in on
on your Able Muse and hung around 'Musing
on Mastery.' After reading several starts, I de-
cided to be a good sport and call what I find
here, 'Musings on Mastery,' -- just as you call
it.

And yes, again today when I clicked on AM,
just as that day last week, were these 'musings
on mastery.' But how is that one can 'muse on
mastery' and post those mastery musings-- these
musings one has before posting?

If 'muse' (noun) is a state of 'dreamy abstraction'
(Webster) and 'muse' (verb intransitive) is defined
both as a passive mental act (if 'passive mental act'
is not 'contradictio in adjecto') and as a reflective
saying aloud- after, I gather, a 'musing' which went
before 'musing,' then 'musing on mastery' seems
to me to be a title selected for alliteration more
so than for good sense.

The posts and threads seem quite good-- but, of
course, they are not 'musings' at all. They seem
to me only industrious, in the sense that I detect
'notes' turned to comments, as if thought by self.
Sometimes they read as a secret-honoring of the
professor who spoke days ago what ingested and di-
gested today without admittance of that fact-- and
all under the guise of, yes, that word, under the
guise of 'musing.'

Allow my addition to the definitions of 'muse.'
(verb intransitive). Muse-- productive leisure with-
out the intent, without the wish, nor the inclina-
tion to reveal what was 'mused.' Musing is musical
comedy for the half-alert, for the whistful, for the
Symbolist holding against reality. The muser is warm,
velvety, mellow.

In muse nothing is made typical by thought.

The muser is not sophisticated, brisk, nor bent on
heuristic or forensic-- nothing needs proving, trans-
lated, no theme needs utterance as proposition. To
muse is to 'wally-wally' down to the river and lie
in marram grass, and to evince no surprise if Ovid's
sprites emerge from the water combing silver fish
out their hair with combs made of chrysoprase.

That is good; that is authenic muse.

Wheat