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Mon 15 Aug, 2005 03:47 pm
Quote: Hope, ... , which whispered from Pandora's box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivious. It's a law of motion, a fact of physics that **** could name, no different from the stages of white dwarfs and red giants. Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.
From The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
This passage stopped me cold when I read it. I reread it a couple times and it struck me each time. Maybe I was feeling lonely, or old, or both but the more I read the passage the more I like it.
What do you think?
It's beautifully written. Good imagery and stuff. However, I disagree with what it says. Never forget that we are still a whole.
Last night in the bath I got to meditating upon the loss of hope involved when an animal lies down to die.I have seen an old tom cat do it and I presume it is the fate of those animals,such as elephants,which have no predators.
I wouldn't go so far as to think animals have a capacity to hope but it may be that loss of hope deals death.Animals seem to hope though.
I saw a play on television about a man who was diagnosed terminal who found a derelict building in the country in which to lie down and die.He befriended a young boy who had roamed there.It interested me because I thought the message might be that acceptance produced a pain free demise as that cat seemed to achieve and I daresay elephants do.
Mailer's description of Gary Gilmore's death seems to confirm this point.
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