I was supposed to be getting an early night tonight.

It is now 3am, and I have stayed up reading Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat", and I literally forgot about the passage of time. It has been a long time since a book has done this to me, and the first time a work of non-fiction has.

The book consists of short case studies, each focusing on a patient and their illness; the Korsakoff's-inflicted Mariner, the disembodied woman who lost the feeling of her body, and the eponymous man who "forgot" how to recognise faces. It tries to pave a path towards the secrets of the human brain, but the roads are not connected to each other, or anything else. It has left me wanting to know.

But, the book is a fantastic read. Sacks can write very well indeed, and can evocate the cases of his patients with a kind empathy. I'm reading it for the Philosophy, however, and it's full of that, too.

I'll get back to musing on the subject of identity, then...

You Know Nothing

Alice chases her rabbit down the rabbit hole. I see now that this bewilderment of sense which follows is just the analogy for the chaotic mess of the working, entropic mind. Understanding and knowledge are warrens for the conscious mind to chase concepts through; small portals from the surface which expand and grow in complexity the further down you go. The further you go, the more you realise the infinite nature of Human Comprehension, and therefore the futility of seeking “Complete Knowledge”.

I will be chasing my metaphorical rabbit for as long as I exist, and I will never catch it.

S/Cooke