ATTORNEY LAWYER LOS ANGELES

With a healthy swagger of a swig of gin, he leveled a grin on me, ‘Friend, trust me, the worst that can befall you in this life is to know yourself undeniably. Ive had the opportunity to understand the beast within mine self; charming devil really, as long as you don’t give him power of attorney or uncross your legs. Now, in your decent vanilla type, the true self will always remain distant and nebulous. Never clear. As long as your self is a fable or rumor or a slight tidal tugging on your decisions, then you will be safe and content and fed. A ‘distant absentee landlord self’ is the best you can achieve, one which drops in only at harvest time to collect the rent and leaves promptly with a polite flourish of his cap. When you really dwell on it, the majority of you out there in the world are only sharecropping in your souls. The worst, and never curse your worst enemy with this, is an arrogant, jealous, petty, micromanager Yahweh self. I shudder…’

‘I can tell you what the self is not. The self is not a haven or heaven. It is not an absolving rain, a parting of darkened clouds, nor a sacred bull, it is not a friend, it is not a lover, and it must never be confused as a Truth. It is a cold wall. It will give no purchase. You cannot climb over nor burrow under it. It does not care what illusions and winks you sell in your head. It is the immutable mute until you meet it head-on; from there it becomes the unassailable asshole. It has a light (or lie) bending gravity. You can step away from it for a moment, but at each further step the pull of that gravity increases until you can resist forward no further.’ Another drink, ice clinking ‘And you plummet back on your self. Insanity, in all its flavors and hacks, is nothing more than the peculiar way one has been broken on their self, from a simple garden variety neurotic broken finger to a full autistic paralysis.’

‘When a man is said to have met his destiny he has only submitted to his self. You know what the word Islam mean? Submission. The last act of free will is true submission. Where there is no escape, you can either break in half or relent – and neither will leave you a particularly appetizing creature. This is why I say that the worst fate is to know your self undeniably, because its undeniability will crush you until you submit and become irrevocably that which is yourself.’

He twirled ice in his glass. ‘And I will tell you something else. The most dangerous man in the room is the one who loves what he is.’

Ten Oklahoma State University students were recently awarded the Bailey Family Memorial Trust Scholarship. The scholarship will allow the students to study abroad during the upcoming academic year. Recipients include: Brittney Bierschenk, Alejandra Gonzalez, Carly Luebber, Kaylan Lee, Adele Wishon, Jerica Dry, Audrey Bridgers, Veronica Powers, Skylar Smith, and Katherine Miller. The trust was established in 1982 by J.B. Bailey, an OSU graduate and Tulsa attorney, and his brother, Richard E. Bailey, longtime OSU humanities professor and founder of the first study abroad program in OSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, in memory of their grandmother Ida L. Davis and mother Lalla D. Bailey.