Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More




Mint Condition

Terra Valentine, Spring Mountain, St Helena, California, USA

June 5, 2009



This essay, Mint Condition, is the sequel to the fifth trilogy Visits With A Friend:
  1. Natural Expression
  2. Essential Question
  3. There Is No "The Answers"
in that order.

It is also the first in an open group Visits With A Friend Sequels:
  1. Mint Condition
  2. Tempered Tornado
  3. Who Said That? Who Really  Said That?
  4. Creating For Creation's Sake
  5. Reinventing The Game
in that order.


It's always cherry. No matter how old it gets it's always in mint condition. No matter how many years it's been here, it's always brand new.

It never requires restoration, patching, buffing, or polishing.

It doesn't deteriorate. It never ages, never decays, rusts, decomposes, oxidizes, or breaks down. It's just here. It'll always be here. Always. Always mint. Perfect. Pristine. Immaculate. Impeccable. Like new.

It never shrinks or fades. It doesn't matter how familiar it is: it's always intriguing, always presenting a new facet, a new face. There's always an original cut  which hasn't showed up before - ever - even though it and all its facets have been showing up millions and millions of times over and over again throughout the millennia.

It shines and gleams, its deep warmth reflecting its newness so accurately, so intensely, so perfectly  it's impossible to distinguish its existence from what it creates. Nothing is too small or too big to be excluded from its realm of re-create-ability. It's smaller than the smallest atoms, electrons, and quasars. It's bigger than the universes and the galaxies. Yet no matter how it looks when viewed from either ends of its continuum, everything else relative to it is always in scale, always in correct perspective.

It serves yet it rules. It defends compassionately yet triumphs aggressively. It dies with the melting of morning dew yet outlives all of time. It gives soft kisses to wake the world every day. It brings cataclysms and armageddons to reduce the world to dust. And it does both with the steely eyed smile of cosmic indifference.

It may be the most - if not the only  - generous giver. Everything starts with it. Everything comes from it. And in the end, it claims everything back. It goes through dizzying changes, completely rearranging its constitution every nanosecond. Yet it allows itself to endure and remain present in forms which can be appreciated, in shapes which can be seen, in objects which can be touched. And while it's doing exactly that, it has the chameleonic  ability to blend in so totally with its own manifestation that it's not seen. It's absolutely invisible - yet it's all that's there in the all and everything. And in its disappearing wake is the mystery, the open faced, open booked un-mysterious mystery of where it went and / or how this  all got here in the first place.

It's my Friend. It's the first Friend I ever had. Now, nearly half way through this great adventure of being here, things have changed. People have come, people have gone, things once important are now forgotten and insignificant. And what I see when I look around now is it's my Friend who's still here. Others have come and gone but my Friend's still here. Still standing. Still standing with me. Still standing for  me. Still none the worse for wear, still smiling the steely eyed smile of cosmic indifference even brighter now than ever. Unphased, unscratched. Pure. In mint condition.



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