If it is all just quarks, then my quarrel with myself can cease.  My mind will accept that it just mediates the background radiation and I’ll go gently down the entropy chute.  The sun does not regard me.  It does not number my hairs nor does it note the drop of the sparrow from the wire.

And I’ll stop caring about the sadness at the disenchantment of the world, the sadness that creeps inside like lowland fog.  What about you, my friend, do you like or hate that conclusion?  Do you have any feeling about all this, and do you comprehend your own feeling?  Does it come from the solar energy?  Is this energy closer to you than you are to yourself?   Does the sun dislike project those who do not meditate on her laws, day and night?

I wish I could tell you why I stop to stare inside a single silver drop of dew.  I think I hope to tell you what it is I see.  I suppose I could cite a chemical equation; would you believe it? Don’t you also talk of mystery, awe, and wonder, because the equations are not enough for you?  But these are just placeholder words, maybe, what the accountants call a plug number, the semantic gods of the gaps. If the equations are accurate, why do we have words?  I don’t begrudge the materialists their non-numerical words. You can’t just talk in equations, after all.

Isn’t it the truth that we simply — you and I at least — we simply do not believe in chemistry.  I am a chemistry infidel, but I would prefer to be a believer.  It’s just that when I stare into the light in water, I do not believe I am seeing the chemistry, and neither do you.   And why should we?  After all, why should we do what our quarks find boring? What moral imperative does the sun project?

So let’s go then, you and I at least, while the West is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized, while the women pace to and fro talking of Michaelangelo, let us go then you and I, and dare to eat a peach.