A book does not beep at you, spy on you, sell you out to marketers, interrupt with breaking news, suck you into a doomscrolling vortex, cease to function in a nor’easter, flood your eyes with melatonin-suppressing blue light or otherwise interrupt your already troubled sleep. That’s why my best beloveds are all getting books for Christmas. Who wouldn’t want such benefits for the people they love best in all the world?
This bizarre need to feel busy, or to feel that time is structured, even when one is sprawled on the couch on a weekend afternoon—where does it come from? Is it inscribed in our DNA, or is it as much an invention of industrialized culture as paper clips and microchips?
A universe is the greatest gift that an experimentalist could hope to get out of the vacuum. Inside, the gift might contain early atomists who consider the vacuum as empty, followed by scientists who end up creating a new universe out of it. What a spectacular interpretation that would be of Rilke’s phrase: “inexhaustible creation, enduring beyond the fate of earth.”
I am not
alone in watching
my body giving up
its truths, the dark