| | I think the trauma of being carted off by the cops was probably punishment enough. Certainly, I had no interest in punishing him further by pressing charges. Among the documents I got him to show me from his back-pack were plans for some kind of graphic design business. I hope he can make something of that. This would be one of those occasions where I might agree with Nathaniel Branden—telling him he was rotten (& sending him to jail or landing him with a fine he couldn't pay) would be utterly pointless. Sally & John, whose apartment this is, after all, had no more impulse to do that than I. As we sent him on his way with some nice wine & salutary words, after he returned to apologise & return the stuff the cops had mistakenly packed up, my heart went out to him. Even though it's spring here, it was a cold night, & he had nowhere to go except a charitable night-shelter. And he'd been comprachicoed at school. I felt nothing but waves of sorrow & sympathy. Nothing to do with cheek-turning or anything so yukky. Just fellow-feeling for a human being who, in his case, is at crossroads he's been conceptually blocked from being able to identify. I felt anger at "the system," not at him. The state education system that had clipped his conceptual wings & cast him out of its nest unable to fly. The MTV esthetics, child of post-modernism preached by comfortable state-subsidised professors, that had probably ground his brain to mush with repetitive, hearing-destroying jungle-noise. That is the unspeakable evil against which I'll continue to press charges.
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