Reality

            On Sunday I’d hoped it would be as cold as it had been for the two days before because I needed a cold day so I could put the perishable things from my fridge outside and defrost the freezer. But Sunday was not cold enough for refrigeration and so I just did the laundry.
            One good thing about having been paid with so many quarters on Friday night at Artists 25 was that I didn’t have to make change at the Laundromat.
            Coming home, from across the street I noticed that there’s a new restaurant opening next door to my place. The Cube Chinese restaurant had been closed for a few months and the notice they posted on the door implied that they would be reopening after renovations. But the fancy sign that’s up now says, “Sho Izakaya” with the “S” made to look like a wave splashing in two directions and that same wave design is painted broadly across the windows on either side of the door. I’ve neither heard nor seen any construction going on down there but I’ve noticed their wi-fi network is already on my menu. If it’s the same owners, that’s quite a renovation to go from a Chinese restaurant to a Japanese restaurant.
            When I was coming in, Benji was hanging around outside the donut shop. I asked him if he’d noticed the noise that the furnace had been making. Like I did at first, he thought that the squeaky droning sound was coming from outside. When I assured him it was the furnace he said he would call the landlord.
            Because there’s a song I want to play at the next Shab-e She’r poetry reading I made a commitment to practice it an extra time every day. But since November 1st I’ve kept forgetting almost every day. On Sunday evening I decided to get caught up and so I practiced “Dead Autumn Leaves” several times in a row. Sometimes it seems the more I play it the worse I play it.
            I spent a lot of time reading Avicenna’s argument to prove the Necessary Existent being (or god) in order to answer one of the questions for Tuesday’s tutorial: Consider Avicenna's argument for the Necessary Existent (p.246, § 12). How (in rough outline) does this argument work? Does it work, or does it fail?
            Here’s my answer:

            Only something that exists in reality can cause mere potential to also exist in reality. Avicenna thinks that there has to be a purely real cause of all existence because otherwise there would be an infinite chain of things that were made to exist by things that were made to exist. For Avicenna nothing can exist in reality without one fully real being existing as the cause of everything else. If this necessary being did not exist everything would be impossible.
            Avicenna’s argument does not prove the Necessary Existent. There is no reason that the infinite chain of causes that he suggests could not be all there is. Things could be caused to exist necessarily until they are caused to become possible again and then necessarily another thing or part of another thing or something could become several things and on and on. Existing things are not necessarily less real just because there is possibly no Necessarily Existent being.

            That evening I heard the landlord’s voice in the hall, as he’d come in response to Benji’s call. When the heat came on later the noise in the pipes was gone.