The Big Question

The big (can I rightly describe it so?) question:

Where are the moments of always within never?
- complements of Muriel Barbery. Commentary from the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog perpetuated this idea.

Conversely, what is the no of all nothing?
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She pulls a crayon out of a coloring box. It is grey. Grey like the sky. Grey like the sea. Grey. Or perhaps she feels meticulous. She describes the hue as light grey. Or dark. But in the end the color is still grey.

It was a hot summer's day, the type of day where one knows not where the sun lies; for its presence is everywhere. Above-behind-below I felt the fiery rays. The blistering warmth pressed my glistening skin against the rubber-burning concrete, holding me in a hug so intensive that I could feel my glands bruising. Bruising and spouting out the salty sweat that is their blood. I ducked into a store, any store, in order to escape the oppression. Lo and behold it was a bookstore. Standing in a room that one scarcely believes can remain in the greedy, technology-simple world of today, my eyes perceived no-one (though I am certain the store was packed with chill-seeking bodies). All I saw was a book. A book with a grey cover.

Any other day I would have picked up a novel I was familiar with, a recommended piece of literature, but on that day (whose date is lost to time) I extracted a novel of contradiction, a book about the beauty in ugliness and the wonder in monotony.

And although the outer cover has long since rested on the mass of pages beneath, closed, the story has never again sensed oblivion in my life. And this question, in my mind, lingers...

I wonder what these moments are. I gape at the beauty provided by true contradiction. I wonder what defines breathing oxymoron's. I wonder if an absolute can truly exist.
I wonder. I gape. I wonder. I wonder. And I will search.

So, why does this question grab me? Because I do not know the answer. And yet... answers are everywhere.

Atonement as a novel, as a concept, and as a feeling truly embodies this question. While digesting this book the reader is all but forced to ask if anyone is innocent. Are association and ignorance simply a type of sin? However, in this world of relatively absolute guilt, there persists a hope. An ultimate hope of always quite despite the concept of never. The love between Robbie and Cecilia does not work. It is awkward and impractical, impersonal and obsessive. It is simply not meant to be.

But on it persists.
So, can a trace of absolute exist within the picture of impossibility while in the element of barbaric and essential love?

I think it may be able to.


Reaching beyond literature - one may propose that anything that touches upon life runs the border of this question. But is that absolutely true? Probably not.

I guess I will see. Or find out...