The moment you try to define infinity you lose it in essence

This morning I came across a scrap piece of paper on which I had written We somehow come to believe that we will understand the infinite by expanding the finite. Instead, expanding the finite adds more filters.

So. You are warned. We are back to that one topic which can only be answered with a question.

On the same piece of paper, I had also written There is no easy way to talk about personal mystical experiences. It's not (just) that people question them or go sceptical on them. It goes beyond (that, in that) language (itself) is the language of the sceptic.

Infinity. When I was a kid, when I was taught to count, the impression was left that infinity is somehow just 1 digit beyond the last number known to man. But, it's not that at all. If you write down LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS ONE, you are still firmly in the realm of the finite and you can continue to push back the boundary with LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS TWO and so on, all the way to LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN and so on .... Infinity only happens when you finally get tired and stop the count ....

Oops... did you see that happening? I've just sneaked in a definition of the infinite, which is, sigh, as helpful as it is problematic.

The moment you try to define infinity, is the moment where you lose it in essence.

Un-naming

As one of my writer friends frequently points out, I have a reluctance for naming characters that borders on compulsive. Check back my #friday flash stories, if you don't believe me. My characters are 'the mother', 'the muse', 'the guitarist', 'his friend'. In one story I named my main character J and said to the above-mentioned friend, "Well, at least I half named that one."

But maybe there is a little more than laziness or lack of inspiration at work, because ever since I was a kid, I've had this strong feeling to be 'free' and naming of course implies ownership. We get names from our parents, nicknames from friends (and enemies). Naming is a form of colonization. In the old Cape Colony, slaves and indigenous people could only participate in society by being baptized into the Christian faith AND BEING RE-NAMED IN THE PROCESS. In fact, slaves were also named upon arrival. Native Americans were called Indians by early explorers who mistaken thoughts they had discovered the East. The Xhosa tribe were named that by their rivals, the San and it means roughly 'The Angry People'. The San, on the other hand, refer to themselves as merely 'the people', a subtle implication that the claim to humanity from anyone other than the San themselves is slightly questionable. Naming is claiming. Naming is the encroachment of domestication upon the wild. Naming is taming, or sometimes making an attempt to tame the untamable. Naming draws borders. Naming lays claim and keeping something unnamed preserves just a tiny seedling of the feral and the formless within its soul... leaving it with the potential to transcend, to transform and to find its own path... A little vagueness leaves room for the imagination... and the infinite... gives the magic of the spaces in between some room to breathe.

I completed the chalk drawing this morning. I haven't drawn in chalk for a while... In keeping with the blog post, I am not naming the subject...