Talking to the fishermen as they brought in their catch, I saw a drowned sailor. My Dad told me most sailors can't swim. I didn't understand, it seemed like so obvious a precaution.  Once I sailed a Catamaran inter-island and swam off the side. For the first time in the water, I was frightened out of my wits. I couldn't feel safe in open ocean. The inky black depths, gave no bottom to my fears, which came tumbling in. I saw that I had always swum in relation to the bottom. The bottom let me have a context, a contrast.   Sailors looked at the boat as the bottom. Water was in relation to the boat and without a boat, there was no context and that is frightening. A sailor learning to swim meant ceasing to trust boats, so swimming was deeply against a sailors ethic.

I suppose some people have this contextual reason for fearing flying.  Similar fears arise in me in night forests. Clouds, no moon, pitch black.  Light is missing. I walk with my arms outstretched, by touching trees. I listen.  Feeling my way along. This was context of the most frightening event in my life.  I heard a quiet flutter. A scream. A blood curdling death scream of a mad person. A nothing held back as life ebbs away scream.  I saw nothing. I thought I had heard an ax murderer kill an asylum patient. I gave myself over to fear. I couldn't re-connect my senses to the gentle forest I knew. I ran, crashing into scratching branches.  Sweating, hard breath, I finally broke into a clearing. I wouldn't go back to investigate.

Months later an old woodsman told me about what I had heard. At night, the rabbit stops to listen, but deosn't hear anything. Until it feels the wind off the wings of an owl right before the grip of the talons. Before his back bone is broken the rabbit screams a human scream the only sound of a mute animal his final breath and song. This is what I heard.

I have this same fear with ungrounded praise. If praise is not grounded in pointed criticism, I feel the deep blue sea. I am floating above ...nothing. I hear the scream but don't know what it's about. Praise that's always available has no value because it has no consideration. Useful praise is grounded in criticism, in the knowledge that if I got bad, I'd hear about that too.

 One sided praise is gaga lover's talk,  like the romantic poets of the17th century, "your eyes ... your lips".  Who is going to trust a hustler like that?

I don't want praise without contrast, without a field, with only one dimension and with only one sense.