Leaves of Grass

The scene is Athens, 400 BC.

A bunch of the local brainiacs have gotten together,

the wine is being passed

and the ideas are flowing fast and furious.

The debate's in full force, and Socrates has the floor.

Who enters?

Alcibiades, drunk, a beautiful man,

hopelessly in love with his mentor, Socrates.

And, uniquely, in all of these dialogues,

Socrates doesn't get the last word.

Alcibiades does. Why?

Because passion, Plato seems to be saying,

is essentially and mercilessly human,

and the best that we can hope to do is to quell it

through relentless discipline.

To Socrates, the healthy life

is comprised of constant focus by the individual,

to excise those forces that weaken

or confuse his understanding of the world around him.

He implores us to devote our lives to this kind of control,

meaning our every waking moment.

Socrates recognised what every philosopher

and religion, for that matter, in the history of the world,

from Plato to Aristotle, from Epicurus to the Stoics,

from the Judaeo-Christians to the Buddhists, have all observed...

...which is that the balance needed for a happy life is illusory.

And as soon as, in our gorgeously flawed human way,

we think that we've attained it,

we're pretending divinity,

and we're gonna crash like Icarus, flaming, into the sea.

So think about that this weekend,

when you think you're on top of the world

and then you pour a pitcher of beer down your throat

and chase that upper-classman, who's out of your league.

Aristotle is next week. Don't just look at it as words.

Imagine the scene. These were people. They were alive, like you and me.

They thought these things. Breathe 'em into life.

So, I was thinking about doing a sort of contrast

between dialogue and chorus in Sophocles.

Yeah, you should check out Nietzsche's 'Birth of Tragedy'.

He says that tragedy emerges from the clash between Apollo,

god of reason and harmony, and Dionysus, god of intoxication,

and that their struggle within our human condition is inevitable,

and that is what has produced

the most salient form of art the world's ever known.

Tragedy? What, you don't think so?

I like comedies. You wanna see a movie?

No, Miss Greenstein, I'm sorry.

Did you get my note?

- And? - I did.

It was very clever of you to write it in Latin.

With the repeated use of the passive periphrastic?

It was quite profligate.

And how I was sending up Cicero

with all those alliterative adjectives

thrusting themselves into the verbs?

- None of this was lost on me. - So?

Miss Greenstein, you are very, very bright

and very fetching in your way,

but there are certain rules,

mores, if you will, lines that we don't cross.

Uh-huh.

I'm not joking, actually,

and I'm gonna ask you in the future to refrain...

No! No, no, no... No! Please, don't do that!

I'm gonna ask you to open that door, Miss Greenstein.

“Lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus“

“Flama deanat, sonitu suopte.”

'Catullus 51', the Lesbia cycle, yes. However...

Oh, no, no, no! Abs... Absolutely not!

Miss Greenstein!

“..Gemina, teguntur lumina nocte!”

This is not good for either of us!

No, Miss Greenstein! No! Restrain yourself!

Oh! Excuse me! Urn... I...I...

Maggie! Mag... Maggie! Please don't go.

Miss Greenstein was just leaving.

Maggie...absolutely nothing.

You don't have to say anything.

I would never... She... She... She went and just...puh!

They're all in love with you. Just like Harvard.

Who told you that?

This is the Classics department.

No-one is more gossipy than you people.

OK, I am going to Cambridge in the morning.

It's just a lunch.

I don't wanna know.

We don't deal in crystal meth. We don't deal in cocaine.

Not your rock stuff or your powder.

We don't deal in nothing you gotta cook up in a spoon

and shoot into your arm.

Pills? Pharmaceuticals? Hell, no, by and large.

Maybe...well, maybe the black molly's gonna pass through these hands

on its way to somewheres else,

just on account of the fact I used to like popping them in high school,

'cause they helped me get my homework done.

But that's generally where we draw the line.

No, sir. We deal in 100% pure, Oklahoma-grown, exclusive. Why?

Because I ain't gonna blow my house up

mixing up antihistamines into dynamite.

And, spiritually, I don't cotton to something

that's gotta pass through a needle.

Chemicals, well, I just don't like 'em.

My people was bootleggers before all this.

It was a backyard operation. They did it natural.

Little bit more of a science nowadays,

I will grant you that.

He say you change your mind, get you up north.

He mentioned Texas?

Texas ain't gonna happen. Dick, we don't wanna sell in Texas.

Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri.

I ain't interested.

He say you'd better get your mind around being interested.

Meaning what?

Meaning your choice is to expand your business,

or we shut you down entire.

Then how you gonna pay your debt?

Well, what happened to Fatback?

Arrested last week.

And the Rawls fella up in Liberty Mounds?

Blowed his house up.

Oh, see, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

- Well, it's tough times. - Ain't that the truth.

Used to be, you could get a couple of trip wires,

a couple of booby traps, a good set of dogs,

you pay off your local constable, and just live on the property.

Feed her a little 13-13-13 fertiliser,

and it's like growing summer beans.

Even the war on drugs passed us by.

Now there's the war on terror.

Not that I ain't interested in

the travails of a small-time drug dealer...

- You calling me small-time? - We gotta make it to Tulsa.

You know I was the first grower in the state who ever employed hydroponics?

What's hydroponics?

Germinating the seed in water, you shit-for-brains.

Do you know how many generations of hybridisation

I've had to do to get my top three varietals?

There is a goddamn reason I grow the best!

Enough, Brady. What's it gonna be? Pug wants his money!

Well, if I'd known about a timetable, we'd have been doing...

Shut your face about a timetable. He's offering you a way out.

You sure as shit better take it,

or he's gonna bust open your glory hole like nobody's business.

We should turn these.

I ain't gonna manufacture or purvey anything

that I won't ingest into my own sweet self.

Look you here.

How you gonna call that a controlled substance?

Well, the government do.

Look at the bud structure on it.

The crystal density, the smell of them terpenes.

You can't synthesise that.

That is nature's delivery system for goodness,

distilled into a pure form.

It glides down into your belly and blooms into a feeling of peace,

in this world beset by evil.

That world is gonna be there no matter how much grass you smoke.

Now, look here.

You wanted to build the fucking Taj Mahal to hydroponics.

- Well? - And you done it.

But you knowed what you was getting into with him,

and he sure as shit ain't going away.

Brady!

My mind's working on it.

Howdy, Sharon. Where's she at?

Oh, she's in her usual spot.

- Hey, Joe. - Brady.

Hey, Mama.

Well, it's a new article on Billy, and a theory he wrote himself.

Thank you.

- You know, I've been thinking. - Hmm?

Maybe... Maybe your daddy wanted to get killed.

Somehow, I got this picture of him, running toward a machine-gun nest

because he'd rather die that way than come back to Little Dixie,

and grow old, just stare through a window.

Well, seeing how he was on about every drug imaginable,

I wouldn't spend my time trying to figure out

what was in his head over 30 years ago.

Do you remember him at all?

I remember smelling weed for the first time on him.

Well, that certainly had its impact.

Daisy, why don't you come home with us

and live with me and Colleen for awhile?

- Colleen and me. - “Colleen and me”.

What's your version of proper grammar?

Rhythm, maybe. Don't duck the question.

You're 12 years younger than anyone in here. This is ridiculous!

I like it here. I can do what I want.

And I'm not eager to get stranded when you get yourself killed

or taken back to prison.

Mama, Colleen's pregnant.

You don't say?

I've been dying to tell you!

Ahh, well, I'm happy for you.

Well, how about you? You're gonna be a grandma.

Are you gonna be a husband?

I ain't Dad.

Your father was a freaked-out genius who wasted his life.

You could have done anything.