18 Mehr 1405
Quatrain 47 of 75
“And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in—Yes—
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be—Nothing—Thou shalt not be less.”
Reflection · Autumn 1405
In autumn the Nothing is visible in the direction you are traveling — not today, not this week, but the vector is clear. Khayyam's verse is most necessary here: yes, it ends in Nothing, and here is what that means: not less. The wine you drink now, the lip you press now, the autumn afternoon you inhabit now — these end in Nothing. And they do not lose anything in the ending. Nothing is not subtraction.
Thou shalt not be less. In autumn, with the harvest done and the leaves falling, hold this. What you are — this specific, mortal, autumn-inhabiting self — is not diminished by its finitude. It is exactly what it is.