Tuesday, September 1, 2009

"Shadow", Chapter 1, Part 2

I actually didn't even read more of the book today. I read more about the concept of Maya. Through the evil that is Wikipedia, this led me to transcendence, then naturally to immanence, then to Kant. I'm not sure whether to curb these little excursions in the future. I'm sure Gene Wolfe wants his readers to think about what he's written, but does he want it at the expense of never finishing the book? I'm sure all those concepts have bearing on what comes later, though, since they're all around us like the air we breathe; Radio Society playing low in the other room, making us tap our foot unconsciously. Plus Wolfe probably studied them all consciously, too. These are all huge ideas (vague notions on which entire systems of ideas are based, actually) and I'm having a hard time trying to write any coherent opinion of my own. I think I've experienced a feeling of immanence (the divine permeating the physical world). Some days I just think I was fooling myself, though. I don't think I've had an experience of the transcendent, because that doesn't even make sense to me, to have an experience (even a feeling) of what is beyond experience, but I'm still convinced that the divine is transcendent. I know there's another room outside of this room, and there's a whole world outside of that. So I am convinced that there is more... something outside of this room we call the universe (although my analogy may be flawed). And if the divine exists, which I only intermittently believe, it exists everywhere. So it seems I'm a skeptical mystic. What a strange creature I am.

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