philosophy | LOST QUARTER BOOKS

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Dress Accordingly

Winter is the most honest of seasons. Intent laid bare to the bone. The universe is unforgiving, this part of it especially. Dress accordingly.

The people who talk of the magic of a white Christmas, the wonder of snow, do so because it is infrequent where they are from. A rare occurrence whose arrival does seem portentous. And like any spell, it will pass and the world will be set to rights. Here we know better. Here we know the winter is a conqueror and we its subjects, that the wind has a bite to draw blood.

Which is not to say there is not beauty to be found, but it is a forbidding kind. There is a silence that comes with snow, especially as it is falling, a hush settling upon the world. Everything distant and still. The way ahead is unbroken, no footprints to guide us. We can look back and watch our footsteps slowly vanish.

That is the truth of the universe. All our furious, burning effort will come to nothing in the end. All our monuments will be covered over and our words will be forgotten beneath the swirling drifts of time. And we will find ourselves distant and still.

There is a comfort in that understanding. All that matters is who we are now and what we do together. Come closer. Stay warm.

The Mask and the Void

What is a face but a mask obscuring all that lies within? The eyes are the portal to the soul they say, but how little they reveal. All our expressions are pantomimes, grinning and frowning as we think the occasion demands. But is it us there for all to see? We act as if it is so; how could we not? On that other road lies mistrust and madness, the loss of self. Yet, can we ever really say we know someone, know what is in their minds? Oh, they tell us true, so they say, but we all know how words obscure as much as they reveal.

Do we have a secret self that no one can share, that is ours alone? Those thoughts that echo through the caverns of our minds, do we keep them hidden? I think, therefore I am and so forth. A solitary existence upon which no one can intrude. But are we ever truly alone? Even when we have sealed ourselves away, monks upon a fast, our thoughts are shaped in words and images, by all we have seen and done and who we have been with. We are mimics, all things to all people, as needs must. After all, what are we, in the end, without them?

An absence, a yawning void. That is what is at our centre and we spend our frantic, furious days trying to give it some shape and meaning. But the only meaning to be found is each other, all of us, together.