The forehead — The place of humans in Creation. Humans are a means, not an end. Human ends are, to the Divinity, only means. Thus, evil and pain. Stoical acceptance.
The eyes — Aesthetics. The Platonic ladder of desire, from appetite to contemplation. Imperious striving for beauty, and suspicion that understanding is a result of habit in contemplation.
The mouth — Expression: all of Poetics. Supreme voluptuousness, supreme sensuality, the word. The word, only true human product, only sense in which humans create, or collaborate thoroughly with Creation.
The heart — The human order is a moral order. Every human success, consciously or unconsciously, is an investigation toward the Good.
The abdomen— Economy, Political Economy, Politics. I’ve never understood it quite well. Perhaps here the yearning for independence, for liberty? Liberty for what? For conquering leisure. Leiusre for what? For working always on whatever it is one likes. And wouldn’t working always on whatever it is one likes be a form of play? Maybe. . .
The hands — The orthodox principle of all action; that is: 1) rigor in the essential; 2) tolerance for the accessory; 3) abandonment of the useless.
The feet — The astronomer’s fable reversed: to see, every day, where one sets foot, and setting it firmly. Now, about the trajectory (curious thing!), a certain fatalism, a certain obedience similar to that which allows me modestly to comply, in my diplomatic career, with the changes of country that I am demanded from Mexico. Thus, my horror of “manifestos,” “platforms,” “programs”—and even of definitions like the one I am currently making, which seem assaults against the necessary plasticity of my being.
(I believe it useless to go below the feet.)
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