Words&Dirt

“Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight.  Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.”

––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, by Peter Singer, pg. 88

“His day has been bothered by God: Ruth mocking, Eccles blinking––why did they teach you such things if no one believed them?  It seems plain, standing here, that if there is this floor there is a ceiling, that the true space in which we live is upward space.  Someone is dying.  In this great stretch of brick someone is dying.  The thought comes from nowhere: simple percentages.  Someone in some house along these streets, if not this minute then the next, dies; and in that suddenly stone chest the heart of this flat prostrate rose seems to him to be.  He moves his eyes to find the spot; perhaps he can see the cancer-blackened soul of an old man mount through the blue like a monkey on a string.  He strains his ears to hear the pang of release as this ruddy illusion at his feet gives up this reality.  Silence blasts him.  Chains of cars creep without noise; a dot comes out of a door.  What is he doing here, standing on air?  Why isn’t he home?”

––Rabbit, Run, by John Updike, pg. 98-9.