John T. Smieska III

1. The world is all that is the case.

You would do exactly the same thing. You would have the same ambitions; you would make the same mistakes. Maybe if you stopped listening to other people; maybe if you just stopped listening. Had you talked more: that’s it; if you talked, and talked in such a manner that other people chose your words over their own and listened to you talk even after you had finished talking to them. You would do exactly the same thing.
Not all is lost. Perhaps if you honed your mind to see, to track wild emotions run across a face. One need not be subtle. One can just continue talking. If you see fear, where did it come from? Where is it going? What thoughts did fear brush as she swept across some other fellow’s mind? If you see greed, do not startle. Draw her out: tame her; let her feed like a squirrel to your palm. You would do exactly the same thing.

1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

It may be that you should have given over to more “rambunctious behavior.” It may be that you might be better served to spoil a little and play the rascal. Give them more of your festive side, and things might be different for you. That is to say, give them more of your festive side, and the facts might be different for you. Act the host: you were the host and could not disappoint when the party plumbed its spirits and took to carousing. Give them old boys acting wild as chums away from wives: A whole country tipping drink and tangling over songs about the fairest of her sweethearts. You are less to blame, the superior beauty of our women is where to fix the mark.

1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by there being all the facts.

You cannot feel the center of the earth because it is buried under ground and grass. You cannot feel the grass beneath your feet, because it has too long been beneath your feet. Even if you were reading this indoors, you have written it outside. You know this. You are a kind of portrait artist who has just made a picture with only one analysis. To know this, something about you must have been placed outdoors. Do not tell yourself “You are in the hearts of the people. You are the people.” Instead, Remember a time when you have been told “You are in the hearts of the people.” Remember when you have been told, “You are the people.” Remember when you have been told these things and then tell yourself, “I must finally accept the fact of what I have been told.”

1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
To fix upon a star depends upon a sky filled with fixed stars: A transient sky filled with fixed and fixable stars. The signature that moved the cargo of your name was once Buonaparte. You were there once. You would have loved your simple destiny. Your Corsica lusty and swollen for the frenzied salt of revolution: You would have melted the enemy of muskets to raise a proud bronze of Paoli. White rocks and thatch grass, ribbons and warm cotton blouses on the hillsides of April. Why didn’t your pride find the sea? A tan sailor’s legs and a smart Italian welcome: “Here’s a slap on the cheek to anyone born to first names with me.” You were haunted Nabulion.
Buonaparte, you were haunted by Bonaparte.You were anytime a choice between Italian and French. You were a tabula rasa, that believed in the stars.

1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
Your armies of armies have been stuffed into the uniforms of one thousand loyal soldiers. Your reach that once spanned from London to Abyssinia, from Moscow to Louisiana, has been crammed into 85 miles square. Your palaces with gardens and fountains that each rolled out beyond a day’s hunt are stuffed into a two-story shanty. You have a dollhouse for a kingdom. The world is present either in memory or in miniature and in category. Laws to last one thousand years now gather dust in empty courts. You rule eleven thousand subjects who need sewers more than kings. Have you always been here? You see many of the same people who parade the old steps through familiar days. Your commands house the same commands; only the number and the scale have changed.

1.2 The world divides into facts.
There are those who would tremble and throw themselves to the ground beneath your feet. If, like the old kings of legend, you strolled among them incognito, you would learn how like a god you are. You changed the world with a sneer. They would brawl to protect your honor; they would hurl themselves in the mud to prevent your name from being soiled. They feel the loyalty resonate from promotions and medals and pensions. To their hearts, it is France who is exiled from you.
There are those who would curse your name to the gallows. To stroll among them you would learn you are a bastard, an opportunist, and a replica. You are no victorious Alexander; You are the Midas of dungheaps, starvation, and tombstones. Happy is the man who has lost his belief in your lies. To them, you should not rest so close to native Corsica; only hell itself could get homesick for a devil.

1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.

Waves threaten to crash against the rock, but they threaten far away from you. A beetle struggles to lift a piece of bark, but it struggles far away from you. If you choose a place to sit, to look out upon the land, the servants will gossip. If you choose a place to sit and watch the clouds, or mark the bustle in Portofarrio: if you choose a place to sit and collect your thoughts, one hundred years from now, biographers will sit and wonder what this place inspired in your plans. They will come from the edges of the world to sit where you choose to sit. When you die, your artifacts will be auctioned to burghers and private collectors. Your chair will be kept under museum glass or rented for a moment’s sitting to ambitious bureaucrats and colonials. Your life will be remembered as if it happened yesterday, but it will be remembered far away from you.