Is new understanding the ex nihilo emergence of new capacity to know from nothing? Or is new understanding shaking ourselves out of one orderly knowing into another? …out of one revealing-concealing, into another revealing-concealing?

To us, it seems, a new understanding is all revelation, and no concealment. We only gain knowledge, because we do not immediately lose what is newly concealed. We remember that which has become inaccessible. The object is gone, but its image lingers on the retina.

In this way concealment is concealed. Concealment is concealed within dead fact.

But the next generation — a generation who never experienced the dead fact as alive — will stare at the fact with incomprehension.

Perhaps they will recite it to demonstrate their knowledge. Perhaps they will debunk it as nonsense. Perhaps they will worship it as beyond sense.

Never forget. Never forget what? Never forget memorized words you can’t feel.