Is Mambrino's Helmet a trophy or a mere barber's basin? I'd say that is quite a Quixotic quest. I've found it best not to stay up at night wondering if it's one or the other. If I accept both without cementing either into a belief then not only am I well-rested in the morning, I also have the advantage of seeing more dimensions of the object than those sleep-deprived souls who end up with an unblinking gaze down a single Cartesian axis.

Sounds like a cop out, you say? Am I being wishy-washy? A fence-sitter? I like to think of myself as more interested in knowing and understanding the object, leading to the evolution of its definition, than in choosing one of many mutually exclusive definitions. Well, that's the kind of clumsiness you get from an academically untrained, lay thinker.

So, my question would be why it's a trophy to Quixote but a barber's basin to Sancho Panza. Unfortunately, not having studied Cervantes, I'm at a loss to answer this so hopefully someone will enlighten me. Could it, for instance, be that what Quixote sees is the potential of a mere barber's basin turning into a trophy? The annoying thing about reality, I've found, is that it's a moving target. It's in our nature to seek to modify it to ends that can be lofty or nefarious or misguided or wise or just plain necessary. And, like it was with Don Quixote, so much of what we consider "reality" comes from stories, be they in our books -- sacred or otherwise -- or those that we are told...by the media, for instance.

I guess there's a knight-errant in me too. He wants to construct a compelling representation of reality from all of this.

--aslam

10:39:41 PM