"I drank a wine --"

Nikole writes: There are more than 600 aphorisms in William’s book, "Extracts of Existence" and hundreds more on the web version. I have read every one of these aphorisms and have even memorized a few. Sometimes I just open "Extracts" to read at random. Yesterday, this one jumped off the page. It is number 343 in the Chapter “God.” I didn’t remember it but now I won’t forget it.

I drank a wine -- blood of the universe. To drink it and to pray is the same thing.

In a life of writing, one aphorism may echo another, expand on another or even take an opposite view of all that came before. I took this one to be "the true one" "the final one" -- for me. I knew that William often addressed this ‘territory’ in his aphorisms and essays -- the search for spirit, god, meaning, the struggle to see where our life fits in an unpredictable universe. So I spent a bit of time looking in "Extracts" for other aphorisms that, in my view, spoke of the connection between our material, sensual life and the life of spirit. Or, as in # 343, there is more than a connection. Here are four:

~ Like each spirit, I yearn for matter

~ All our spiritual experiences we perceive physically.

~ 'Spirituality' - harmony between my body & my 'moods' and between 'me' and the outside world.

~ What am I -- spiritual or materialist? Both. And both in the wrong places.

And here – a pilgrimage:

… concerning garnacha in Catalonia. For me it was a poem. You raise the porron high above your head and let the liquid pour into your throat. The natives and tourists enjoyed it. It was exotic, strange looking and delicious. One year I came to Spain for my garnacha ‘pilgrimage‘ and, it was gone. Some little bottles full of chemicals, no doubt for conservation, replaced it. I would never drink it again.*

*"Galicia" by William Markiewicz


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