Sackcloth

A sackcloth, and within this sackcloth, darkness. Yes well, darkness - what else... but if we could see into this darkness, what else besides the darkness? instead of this darkness rather. Most likely, assuming something - and assuming something we must for if we assumed nothing then we wouldn't be seeing anything besides — we'd see coal. Coal is the object one is most likely to see in a sackcloth, besides or instead of darkness.

But black coal amidst a background of darkness — would we really be able to see this coal? But it doesn't have to be all impenterable darkness, does it? But if one could see it, the coal, would it really be worth seeing? But that's not a question you can go asking yourself. Imagine yourself engaged in ordinary everyday life — if you can imagine such a thing, it shouldn't be too difficult — and this fool peering over your shoulder, asking whether it's really worth seeing whatever it is you happen to be seeing at the time; providing a critical overview, an ironic commentary on the worthiness or not of all the seeing. Maybe you don't find it so hard to imagine.

But coal so: that's what you'd most likely be seeing in a sackcloth - if you could see it, if it was there to see and you weren't prevented by the darkness. If it wasn't there to see, it wouldn't matter about the darkness. And in any case, seeing is enough to be getting on with without worrying about whether it's worth seeing or not... worth seeing if it can be seen; worth seeing if it can't... You could keep yourself going an awful long time with those kind of questions. Those kind of questions and more: Is it even worth knowing it's worth seeing? How am I to know it's worth knowing it's worth seeing? - What a question.

This I see is going nowhere, or worse, it is going somewhere and the somewhere is synonymous with the going; but going isn't staying still, it's progressing, and so while it is yes going somewhere, and at any given moment that somewhere is inseparable from the going — the somewhere you've been going is precisely where you are — but even so you are still going beyond where you are and deeper into and towards and beyond somewhere else. But if you stop going there, what happens then?

You set up camp. “I'm stopping going. I'm happy with here. Yes, if I kept going that somewhere I'd be passing through would certainly be better than here, but still you can't spend all your life going… or maybe you can, but you have to stop sometime, or if not necessarily stop, you can hardly be blamed for the stopping — out of exhaustion, for a rest. Not everyone, only the very few, can keep going and going.
"And so here's good enough for me - for a while or forever, whatever. I can't be blamed. I've gone far enough. I'll pace some boundaries, make myself comfortable."
If you're going to stop somewhere, or stop going somewhere, you might as well make yourself comfortable while you're at it. It would it hardly be better, would it, to make yourself uncomfortable while you're at it?


I started off with a sackcloth and darkness and I've ended up here, however it happened. Would it have been better to have stuck with the sackcloth and the darkness? No, you have to go somewhere and so I got to here. But here is where this, if not me, stops.