Mystery of Self and the Needs of the Body

In the midst of a meditation on the mysteries of food and its consumption comes this passage:


Not just the physiological self, the perpetually hungry, eating, food-besotted self, but the nighttime, dreaming self as well — these rebuff our attempts to understand them, let alone define and control them. Mysterious as we are to one another, we are equally mysterious to ourselves. And this mystery deepens with time, when we see that answers to our questions are in continual retreat, like desert mirages.


from Joyce Carol Oates "Food Mysteries" in Antaeus 68 1992

Tantalus as a figure for our human condition seems to be just out of reach. Without the questions, there would be no mirages. We must, as we breathe, stop asking questions at some time. And that is a mystery.

And so for day 627
31.08.2008