Buckstopping Trembling
We may lack ultimate control
over anything (and reality
may lack ultimate meaning),
but “lack of ultimate”
does not mean “none”—and yet:
that it does not mean “none”
does nothing to make
despair over the lack irrational
(pragmatic considerations aside).
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)