From Cormac McCarthy's "Stella Maris"

“…It’s just another mystery to add to the roster. Leonardo cant be explained. Or Newton, or Shakespeare. Or endless others. Well. Probably not endless. But at least we know their names. But unless you’re willing to concede that God invented the violin there is a figure who will never be known. A small man who went with his son into the stunted forests of the little iceage of fifteenth century Italy and sawed and split the maple trees and put the flitches to dry for seven years and then stood in the slant light of his shop one morning and said a brief prayer of thanks to his creator and then—knowing this perfect thing—took up his tools and turned to its construction. Saying now we begin.”


- Cormac McCarthy

Wallace Stevens - "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts"

The difficulty to think at the end of day,   
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun   
And nothing is left except light on your fur—

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,   
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk   
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,   
Without that monument of cat,   
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,   
In which everything is meant for you   
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,   
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,   
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space   
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

- Wallace Stevens

From "Stella Maris" - Cormac McCarthy

Why do you let me bully you?

I don’t know. Do I?

It’s not important. The world you live in is shored up by a collective of agreements. Is that something you think about? The hope is that the truth of the world somehow lies in the common experience of it. Of course the history of science and mathematics and even philosophy is a good bit at odds with this notion. Innovation and discovery by definition war against the common understanding. One should be wary.