Lightning – just came out of the air. Striking down. Can lightning strike out of the air like that? Just, like, out of the darkness? There are no clouds, nothing.
Cicero spoke of the department as lightning rod. As a channeller of lightning. A capacitator, or something. What does that mean?
That we turn the lightning into something. Into philosophy, maybe.
And what is the lightning?
Transcendence, right? The transcendence of NOTHING – in capital letters. NOTHING as transcendence. The divine NOTHING. The nothingness of God … Cicero couldn’t find it by herself. You have to be attuned, or whatever.
And were we?
She hoped we were.
Why us? Because we were drunk and disorderly, basically. Drunk in charge of philosophy. And full of the hatred of the world – this world. The middle class world. Which she always encouraged.
We were her proteges, right?
She’d say she was our protege.
And what were we supposed to do with this lightning? With the divine NOTHING, or whatever?
Transmit it. Make something of it. A philosophy. A life.
Cicero wanted to use our despair. Our disgust. She wanted to use the fact that we had no hope in the world, in the world’s future. That the world, in its entirety, was as an obstacle to us. To our hopes.
Our hopes could only pass through the destruction of the world, that was the thing. Cicero saw that. We were her apocalyptic proteges. Or she was ours.
Work in Progress 