Michael wrote: "Erin you hostiliy attacked me and I am deeply disappointed in your maturity level. After all this is only a debate. I am an author, as you say, but only of letters, not stories. Therein lies the key difference in what I am stating. In stories the meaning is at least slightly hidden. In letters the meaning is out there for you to see. I state that you must discover the meaning, but going too far is what I am against. You don't need to ask jd about the meaning. Interpert for yourself. Don't take it beyond the most obvious and relevant meaning. Looking at details and attempting to decipher them to such an extent as to find a meaning that isn't there is wrong. You find a message that the isn't there. Therefore you are believing in things that don't exist." I'm replying: Michael, I really don't think I was HOSTILE towards you. Sarcastic, maybe, well...okay, definitely, but I was just trying to say uh-oh. Obviously letters can be misinterpreted, too. How about that? I know this is only a debate, and I'm really attacking your point. See, I don't think this is a debate about finding meaning as much as it a debate and words and the way we use words to communicate meaning (if you can, in fact, communicate MEANING). Maybe I do believe in things that don't exist. That's a chance I take with Santa Claus, the general goodness of human beings, and even with God, some would say. But you say that when I read I should not "take it beyond the most obvious and relevant meaning." Maybe you forget that what is obviouc and relevant to one isn't quite so to another. Further, I know that I've written before, and each time even I look at it I find something else in it that I really hadn't seen before. Does that mean that what I'm seeing the second and third time around doesn't exist or isn't relevant because I wasn't conscious of it while I wrote it down? I'm sorry, I really am. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Erin ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com