So I was on Skype the other night with Gilles as we often are these days...

he's up all night, can't get to sleep, sees I'm on Skype and just calls me. I click on the answer button and Gilles appears on the screen, wearing a dark bathrobe over striped pyjamas. "Je te drange pas?" "Nope, just reading." I told him that I was reading the Hume book for the SenseLab and he said he was sorry he couldn't drop by as he's busy writing grant applications for a secret project with the other Felix (G not Redux). "Everyone's in the same boat these days," I said, "You on the SenseLab project?" "I don't know a thing about it," he said. So I told him what was going on and who was in and he seemed a bit peeved not to have been invited as a participant. He said to me, "none of the others drop by the lab so why am I not on the list? At least I show up at the readings! I mean, I wrote the effing readings!" I had no answer for him but I told him that I would look into it. Anyways, he was cheered by the fact we were so many new faces at the last meeting. I told him we were all a bit flummoxed by chapter 2 and he got a big grin on his face; you know, a cat that ate the canary grin... He took a deep drag on a plastic ersatz cigarette (he's trying to cut down, he said) and then exhaled thoughtfully for what must have been 20 seconds. By the time he was ready to take in his next breath, the smile was gone but there was a twinkle in his eyes. It was like I had found him out sleeping around on a lover. And it came to meGilles, you two-timing dog! You're doing Hume while doing somebody else. And then it just dawned on me. So I looked at him and said, "I can't believe it! You're at it again with Thomas!" He looked somewhat put off by my last statement and I knew I was right. That dirty dog!"Hey, it's okay if Aquinas is old school and you want to venture into the dark side every now and again. But I gotta say, Gilles, some of your bizarre offspring remind me of the creations running around in Solaris." And he shrugs his shoulders and takes another puff from the plastic cigarette, "What can I say? Tarkovsky knew what he was talking about. But there's just so much good stuff there. In Aquinas, I mean. And its more than fly-by-night association. There's affection there, maybe even love. Who knows? Where do you think virtuality came from? Too many cool ideas to be left to rot in the hands of Dominican Aristotelian clerics." I had to agree, "Yes, but all that stuff about the law and property and the passions... all that's Aquinas?!?!" "Ouais, ouais, ouais. What do you want me to say? You want me to send people there? It's difficult enough to get them to hang out with Marx, never mind Spinoza or Bergson! And Whitehead is not particularly party time." "I can see the moralizing coming from Aquinas, but you know the whole Sympathy angle, that's neither Hume nor Aquinas..." And then he got that cat that ate the canary smile again and started laughing when I started shaking my head. "Que veux-tu? Life is not just about creating concepts!" I knew it wasn't Plato or Aristotle or at least not the way he was talking about them. "C'est qui alors?" I asked. "Un Schtoik!" he said. "What are you talking about? Hume hated the Schtoiks!" I asked. What a dog! mnage--trois! I wondered who was the third persona in this philosophical trifecta. "Which one?" I asked. "Guess!" I couldn't. I've never taken the time to get acquainted with the Stoics; their raiment is always in tatters and you can never have a decent conversation... You've likely never seen a bunch of Stoics in front of Erin's Stitching Timethey're like nomadic homeless shopaholics at the Sally Ann with $100 in their pocketsdonning pieces of cloth, throwing pieces of fabric at one another... it's a sight! "Come on, Gilles. Stop screwing around!" I said. "I'll let that one slide, but, guess!" He must've seen me roll my eyes and he says, "You used to be more funner! Posidonius! Po-si-do-ni-us! You never would have guessed." He was right. I used to be funner. And I never would have guessed. But it was starting to smell like a smoked red herring and if I'd have guessed and gotten the cosmic sympathy bit, I don't think Gilby would have been too happy and would have to put up with this and that on concretization. He can be a bit particular. "It is

feeling more and more like a Solaristic offspring! I don't go for the sympathy bit. I don't like the moralizing teleological dimension in the Aquinian ontology. For me the expression needs to be ontologically neutral. If it ain't, it don't work for me. I prefer an ethics to a morality." And then, I heard a sharp impatient knock coming through the speaker on my laptop. There was someone at Gilles' door. He shrugs his shoulders, "Hey, look. Nice talking to you. Gotta go!" I barely had time to say "Bye!" that his image was gone. I sat there wondering who would be making what was likely a booty call at this time of the night when I still questions that needed answering. Slavoj? Alain? Isabelle?