Involution

All the problems of the world begin, says Pascal, with you not being able to sit alone in a room. All our problems began because we had a sense of life beyond our rooms.

Our rooms, our cages, W. says. My office (at work), W.'s study (at home): cages, although W.'s larger than mine; he has more room to pace up and down than I do (that's what thinkers do, he says, pace up and down); he has more room to step back from his shelves to pick out a book (that's what thinkers do, he says, carefully pick out what they're going to read); he has more room for his desk, which is larger than mine, and to pull up his chair to his desk, to begin to write (that's what thinkers do, he says, pull up to their desk and begin to write).

Our cages, our bars, against which in desperate hours, we want to brain ourselves (W. is more desperate than I am). If only we could forget what lay outside. If only our dreams of old Europe, and the thinkers of old Europe, would fall away from us (W. dreams more ardently, more intensely, than I do); if only we could forget our political dreams, our dreams of a great politics, of a politics of the Party (W. wishes for it with more longing than I do); and our religious dreams, our dreams of God, our dreams of the infinite – if only they, too, would leave us (W. dreams more vehemently than I do).

And in the meantime, our cages. In the meantime, my office (at work), W.'s study (at home). In the meantime, our cages: our lives, which we know to be the involution of something wider, something greater. We are made of stars, scientists say. We are made of thought, too – great thoughts. We are made of great politics. Of great religion.