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You keep your distance with your system of touch.

--Tears for Fears.

I reach for the cup of tea
Hand touches cup
I am aware of the touch.

In that momentary touch, that solitary moment, is there a 'subject' and an 'object'? Is the 'I' still I? Before this takes place I have already delineated an 'I' and a 'cup' that is independent of me, "pure extension". And yet, it is also true, on second thoughts, that I find myself in this world, at this particular moment, thinking of reaching out. So, there must have been the possibility of a person like me, a cup like that, and a desire just so. A desire to bridge the gap, a desire that would be impossible without the gap. So, the fact that I can posit an I' is itself a possibility (necessity?) of the world.

I can picture the world but does that (can that) picture also contain the act of me picturing? (Escher). Does the world create the desire or is it that the desire is what makes the world 'the world'?

End of the Road.
Thought may tell me what I can know, not how I should live. Knowledge is not understanding.

Beginning of the Road.
Now I think back to it, Mark had asked: Do you want some tea? Does the world come after language, after a question?

Do I sit there thinking whether the tea exists or not, that if I turn my face the other way it will no longer be? How self-centred! How mistrustful!

Is the relation to what is 'not- I' that which constitutes the 'I'? One could map the self by what it desires, by a series of absences. What would we be without that reaching out? Not: would we be the same person, but would we be a person at all? The tea, I note, has no such thoughts. But if I just reach out, thoughtlessly, mechanically, does this mean that I am just matter coming into contact with other matter or that I have no inner life? Everything, it might be argued, lies in having the right approach to the world.

I-It and I-Thou
Here I am; here it is. The chasm can be bridged; but other distances remain: It is not boundless space that separates us but Time..Time is the Space between me and You. And time yet for a hundred indecisions...

I reach for the cup of tea
Hand touches cup
Remembers it is hot.

~~~~

Celia writes:

Oh, Billo, This will seem facetious, but your post reminded me irresistibly of the following, which I'm sure you'll also remember:

There was a young man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
W hen there's no one about in the Quad."
"Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the Quad
And that's why this tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God."

(Attributed to Ronald Knox, who was referring to the philosophy of George Berkley - 1685 -1753. I also seem to recall that E.MForster quotes it at the beginning of A Passage to India. Or was it Howard's End? Or? Somewhere, anyway.)

anton writes:

hi b, each time i come here i think one day i sit down and read all the stuff here. you'll see, one day i will really do that. have not read the april book by kadare but have another one here at home whose name i have forgotten and not yet read either....

"I am in no way interested in immortality,
but only in the taste of tea."
-Lu Tung

have a fine day

7:58 AM