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Good morning, Perkowtime. Welcome back to practical stoicism. I hope you're doing well.

Last week, Kai and I had a mailbag episode where Kai quoted Seneca as saying,

Why would you wish for figs in the winter? And I found that to be such a beautiful phrasing that I had to go out and seek some of the more poetic pieces from

Seneca. And then, on Saturday, I went to a child's second birthday party. But when I came back,

there was a manila envelope on my porch addressed to me and containing a book that I did not order.

That book was by Dana Gaioya, and I may be saying that last name wrong, I hope not, but it's all about Seneca's work as a dramatist, as a playwright, and apparently, in the ancient world, as a playwright who was second to few and hugely influential up to the Renaissance.

Then vanished. In this form, so to speak, Seneca is known as Seneca Tragicus.

So I got the book in the house, and I dove in, and was absolutely mesmerized by this Seneca

I had never met. So I sought to find a letter that was more poetic than one's shared so far, and I think this one

is a decent example. I notice his metaphors differently now, having read Gaoya, and I appreciate it

differently, this forgotten side of Seneca the Younger. Today's episode is a bit longer, so if you're a

commuter who listens on their way to work,

I apologize, you might have to split this one up into chunks, but truth be told, most of Seneca's

letters are very long, and I'm running out of short ones to share anyway, so we will all need to

learn to adjust. Here is letter 49 from Seneca's moral letters to Lusilius. A man is indeed lazy and careless,

my dear Lusilius, if he is reminded of a friend only by seeing some landscape which stirs the memory.

And yet there are times when the old familiar haunts stir up a sense of loss that has been stored away in the

soul, not bringing back dead memories, but rousing them from their dormant state, just as the

sight of a lost friend's favorite slave or his cloak or his house renews the mourner's grief,

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