Two men, their bodies building triangles on the slab of concrete: foreheads to the ground, pointing toward home. The center is outside the self. This is something they have realized, perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously, as they arrange their lives out of a gravitational necessity. At this time and this time and this time, we orient ourselves in recognition of an external, eternal order of things. I bend, I am flexible, I am made to be the supple mover, it is how we function in a world that is not our own.
I wake up in the morning and, being made in the image of God, I create the world with my opening eyes. I wake up in the morning and, being born into the limits of man, I cannot share what I create. Leibniz's lonely monads in their unimpressed cosmic harmony. If only you could touch me, maybe we'd both feel something. Instead, we are helpless, we take charge by, bowing to the truth. That there is something merciless that mercilessly refuses to be defined. This is justice: to give the unheeding its due.
If only it mattered that we are shaking our fists. But the Stoics knew it, the Epicureans knew it, the Buddhists know it: we cannot affect, so let us not be affected. Causation is a category we cannot think outside of, and an illusion we should not believe in. All the world is hollow: we are reaching out to fill the void with interlacing of hands; we are reaching out into a void that forever separates us. Divided by infinity, "we" do not exist. Divided from us, "I" do not exist. And so, through simple arithmetic, the only thing left is mathematics.
No comments:
Post a Comment