Thursday

"Are you the new recruit?" asked a heavy voice.

And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.

"Are you the new recruit?" said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. "All right. You are engaged."

Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.

"I really have no experience," he began.

"No one has any experience," said the other, "of the Battle of
Armageddon."

"But I am really unfit--"

"You are willing, that is enough," said the unknown.

"Well, really," said Syme, "I don't know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test."

"I do," said the other -"martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day."

Recently, I read a book called The Man Who Was Thursday (A Nightmare). Written a hundred years ago by G.K. Chesterton, one of the best books I have ever had the fortune to read. In the book, Gabriel Syme, a poet turned detective works his way using an ingenious method, involving a gathering of poets and a matter of honour; into the central anarchist council; consisting of people known only by their names, and headed by a funny, yet terrible mastermind known as (what else?) Sunday.

What follows is a heady mixture of surrealism, philosophy and dark humour as the members of the anarchist council discover each other's true nature. The underlying theme of the whole novel, and indeed, Chesterton's purpose in writing it (according to a couple of reviews) is that righteousness is at the heart of a lot of evil in the world, and was intended to reaffirm the author's faith in the world, when he had suffered from depression for most of his life.

These sort of books generally lead me to introspection, and often self-doubt, but this was on a different scale altogether. What if the things we love and the dreams we chase in life are just dark shadows, and what if the world is not black and white but just a miasma of shifting, gray shapes? Already, as an astronomer of sorts, I sometimes feel painfully aware that our lives on this speck of a dust in the universe are entirely insignificant and unimportant, and the span of our lives does not even merit the blink of an eye in the cosmos, if such be there.

But if the reality we perceive may also be distorted, then it is a strange one indeed. Of course, the concrete must thrive, I suppose, but the riot of colours that we often surround ourselves with, on reflection, appears to be a subconscious effort to escape the gray.

(Well, I suppose I have rambled on long enough.)