up and down

This week has been one of ups and downs. I felt like an idiot early on, when, while reading my casebook, I was reading the same line over and over without seeming to have comprehended what was going on. Then I would go to class, and although I would see people called on and unable to answer, my own mind felt incapable of comprehending the vastness of legal knowledge. Let me take one area in particular. The difference between nuisance and trespass. At first it is nothing but a blur as I read the various cases that rule one way or the other in relation to nuisance or trespass, and it is these details which I must learn. I have never been much of a detail person, but now I am am required to be so. Trespass is an actual physical invasion of one's land. Nuisance, to the minimum of what I can discover is using one's own land in such a way as to create an interference with how our neighbor enjoys and uses his own land, even when you do not "physically cross the boundary line" Then there are several more "nano" questions you must ask. (1) what is it to cross the boundary. Must we be able to see the object that crosses, a cannonball, or can it be on a molecular level. At what point does the molecular accumulation of objects amass enough substance to create a trespass? (2) lets say you have a nuisance as defined above, is the activity of the defendant, he who is causing the nuisance, of greater social benefit than the damage done to the plaintiff, the one who has been nuisanced.

I don't want to get into to many more "legal" details. I would rather wax existential and pose a different question. What is the relation between the laziness or unwillingness to take the time to pay attention and be considerate to details and the ego? Is not the mind still based in infantile desires focused on generalities and does not focusing on details require a certain sacrificing of the self? This is the opposite of the adage "the devil is in the details" but it seems to me that the devil also easily masks himself in the cloth of generalities which allow yourself to slide through without commitment, without sacrificing the overall view to delve into the specific where one is not sure if one will come to a dead end. This is the opposite of the mountain top. Entering law school means having arrived at the top and instead of staying there going down the mountain in the opposite direction from whence you came, to risk going into the "details" of the forest and learning to live off of the minutia that lies close to the earth, the hidden berries, the bramblebush (the name of this book recommended to our entire class on the first day by a panel of lawyers who spoke to us-what could that metaphor mean, especially since I have arrived at it on my own. I throw out the devil and go to the details and search from my own divinity in mastering the craft of details, legal details. . .