You’re pretty much obliged to reckon that at the last suspiration the dying become not only acceptant of death but dedicated to it. That there must be some epiphany that makes it possible for even the dullest and most deluded of us to accept not only what is unacceptable but unimaginable. The absolute terminus of the world. Which will not wonder even for the briefest second what might have become of us.
Then he waded out into the river like some wholly wretched baptismal candidate.
Some things in this world cant be helped, he said. And I believe this is probably one of em.
He is sinking into a darkness he cannot even comprehend. Darkness and immobilizing cold.
He’d the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all.
Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be. What’s wrong with that?
He wondered where the blind man was going and did he know how the road ended. Someone should tell a blind man before setting him out that way.
When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure.
And of course it shouldnt come as a surprise to find that people in rubber rooms have a worldview at odds with that of the people who put them there.
One of the things I realized was that the universe had been evolving for countless billions of years.
I only know that every act which has no heart will be found out in the end.
Rawlins lay watching the stars. After a while he said: I could still be born. I might look different or somethin. If God wanted me to be born I’d be born. And if He didnt you wouldnt. You’re makin my goddamn head hurt.
And it may be a superstition with us that if we will just give up those things we are fond of then the world will not take from us what we truly love. Which of course is a folly. The world knows what you love.
Western took a drink and passed the bottle back. Borman drank. The brown liquor boiled in the bottle. When he lowered it the bottle was a third gone and his eyes were watering. He wiped his mouth and held the bottle out. Hell, Western. I’ve drunk worse liquor than that. Here.
He talked to her a long time and as the boy tending the wolf could not understand what it was he said he said what was in his heart. He made her promises that he swore to keep in the making. That he would take her to the mountains where she would find others of her kind. She watched him with her yellow eyes and in them was no despair but only that same reckonless deep of loneliness that cored the world to its heart.
Imperilment is bottomless. As long as you are breathing you can always be more scared.
There’s a lot of wreckage out there. Lot of sparclingers. But they cant cling forever. You got people who think it would be a good idea to discover the true nature of darkness. The hive of darkness and the lair thereof. You can see them out there with their lanterns. What is wrong with this picture?
Borman looked around. Somewhere out here the last ivorybill died. Thirty years ago probably. I still listen for them. What sense does that make? They’re gone forever. I didnt know you were a bird watcher. I’m not. I’m a forever watcher. Forever is a long time.
It aint of a sexual nature is it? No. That’s all right. Go ahead and tell it anyways.
After the 1931 papers it was clear to him that we are capable of mathematical insights that a Universal Truth Machine is not.