Chronicling the Era of Common Fun
A Verse Novella
- for Chris Malloy -
All the vulgarity of time, from the Stone Age to our present, with its noodle parlors and token resistance, is as a life to the life that is given you. Wear it.
-- John Ashbery, “Token Resistance”
* * *
Nowhere does it appear as though order and form
were original, but rather as if
something at first ruleless had been brought to order.
This is the basis of reality in things –
yes, their incomprehensible basis,
the indivisible remainder, that which with
the greatest exertion can never be resolved
in the understanding. Indeed, without
this primal darkness there’s neither reality
of the creature nor ought that’s real in the creature.
And gloom is its fateful inheritance.
Yes, gloom is our necessary inheritance.
Gloom – the lot of all that exists outside itself.
Only God – he who in himself exists –
dwells in pure light, for he alone is of himself.
-- F. W. J. Schelling, Human Freedom
[Next: Out of the Darkness]