One Sense of Autumn

Aging in the season of mellow fruitfulness

I can feel the scope of what matters receding into my view, all before me now in a way it never was. That’s a dimming effect, to come to feel that the uncharted territories of meaning are now charted, and to know that while much remains to be felt and grasped, so little remains to wholly surprise.

There is philosophy and discovery, religion and servitude, love and betrayal, victory and defeat, art.

Against all always is the impulse to sloth; to the pale cast of thought, not in action but dawdling.

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

Such may be true — greats are called in every generation to supreme callings which make eternal their memory. To proceed in learning is, in part, to understand one by one that every sphere has its greats, but that in each sphere they are few and few forthcoming.

I must not suggest that discovery is ever at the point of having been exhausted, for it will never be so. The end of discovery, even interesting discovery, is for immortals alone. It is the borders of discovery, which may be found out, that temper one’s hopes.

—is this the sort of feeling which must lead the never-serving to servitude? The inevitable mapping of the borders of novelty gives way to an angst which left to fester leads to wayward, worthless thought at many an hour of the day. One is tempted to escape not by way of noble striving but by slavish submission to the assumption of responsibility by another, be that God or else.

To find the one sea glooming; to feel one is not the mariner they dreamt; to know the one sea, though large, is the one sea and there will never be another. That might make cowards of most.

See though that these are cowards only and not nihilists, for their world is not lacking for meaning, and they are but fearful scouts who have sailed the water whole and can go no further but must make something of themselves in the strange hills they have seen.

And what strange hills! How unsuitable they seem once you cease to glean them from afar and come to know their contours.

Time keeps careful watch over the hills, ensuring few shall ever summit two, let alone three of them. And so the sickly neurotic is beside themselves, going over and back from base to base, stuffed with thought without thinking: ‘which to climb?’

—yes, tonight I shall watch a film, drink some wine, tend to love, and read, putting off such thoughts which need plague us as winter’s nearness creeps.

---

* * *

---

Outrageous Fortune has been sadly on the backburner for both Tristan and I during a busy semester, but we hope to return to regular essays sooner rather than later. If you haven’t, do subscribe if you’d like to have those delivered to your inbox.