More than once, in the depths of hangover I have yogiberraed a lamentational oath: “I am never drinking ever again, for at least a week.”

The griminess suggests crass oxymoron, but beneath the grime is a Bergsonian paradox — a paradox of time.

Oxymoron and paradox are both species of irony. They are both operations of dual-meaning, whose duality introduces a third meaning.

What divides paradoxic irony from oxymoronic irony is that oxymoron flatly self-contradicts, where paradox finds truth in parallactic depth across planes of givenness. Paradox’s humor is comedic in the classic sense, which is conjoined with tragedy — and this irony stands at world boundaries as a herm.

This same lamentational oath can be meant with oxymoronic irony. And when it is meant this way, it speaks psychologically: we are absurd, our intentions are absurd, and even our most earnest words are spoken with forked tongues. We speak basely even when we aspire. We speak basely especially when we aspire.

Oxymoron ridicules the human condition, where paradox sublimates it. Dry ironic eyes do not twinkle.

Speaking kabbalistically, in paradoxic irony one voice instaurates meaning in pshat and another voice instaurates meaning in remez, and the difference announces together-across-planes sounds a chord, a sensus communis, a depth witness of drash. The chord may be consonant or dissonant, but it resolves in depth-sounding truth, an articulation, not only within, but across worlds.

Drash is parallactic witness, and within it each chronological moment is witness to past, present and future. Some moments look forward, and these moments are promethean. Some moments look backward, and these moments are epimethean.

Some moments are perfect in themselves. Some moments long impossibly for an infinite elsewhere. Speaking mythically, this longing is guarded by the Hespirades, who hold it futile. A scrubbed, polished and decharmed cousin of the hangover lament: We pine for fleeting moments of eternity. We miss most of all eternities we had and lost because we conflate eternity and permanence. We long to taste, once again, lost golden fruit we never tasted.

If a titan can ironize — and this is doubtful — the irony of Cronus would be the most oxymoronic.

How exponentially metaironic would it be to attempt a four-eyed ironic depth of playing oxymoron against paradox?

If anyone ever attempted such a thing, it would be Nietzsche:

To be sure, there is also quite another category of genius, that of justice; and I can in no way see fit to esteem that kind lower than any philosophical, political, or artistic genius. It is its way to avoid with hearty indignation everything which blinds and confuses our judgment about things; thus it is an enemy of convictions, for it wants to give each thing its due, be it living or dead, real or fictive — and to do so it must apprehend it clearly; it therefore places each thing in the best light and walks all around it with an attentive eye. Finally it will even give to its opponent, blind or shortsighted “conviction” (as men call it: — women call it “faith”), what is due to conviction — for the sake of truth.

One of my most rock-tumbled aphorisms: “Conflict divides the world into four halves.”

A few years ago, when the aphorism was still rough, I expanded this idea into an exegesis on the philosopher’s stone.

When conflict breaks out, we are shaken out of unity, and fall into the four-sidedness of conflict. There is [1] what I believe, there is [2] what you believe, there is [3] what I think you believe and there is [4] what you think I believe.(Naive egocentricity, of course, sees only two sides: what I believe and what I know you believe. Until one overcomes naive egocentricity and learns to see conflict as four-sided, progress is impossible.)

To begin reconciliation we try to go from four-sided conflict to three-sided disagreement, where there is [1] what I believe, and there is [2] what you believe and there is [3] our shared understanding of our disagreement.

But sometimes when we reach a shared understanding of the disagreement we realize that this shared understanding has transcended and absorbed our old conflicting beliefs. This new understanding is no longer an agreement about a disagreement, but [1] a new shared belief. The three-sided disagreement is now a more expansive and accommodating unity.

So it’s one to four to three and then back to one. Repeat, ad infinitum.

This post is now entirely out of control.