A Short Stay in Hell

The Scholar of Moab

Spear from the Wealdend’s Tree

THE LIBRARY OF BABEL CONTAINS all the books of a certain size that can be written. I assume all the characters on a standard keyboard and that each book (as described in the original story by Jorge Luis Borges) is 410 pages long with 40 lines of 80 characters on each page. So the total number of characters in the book is: 410 * 40 * 30 = 1,312,000

The absurdity of it has never left me. We can’t care about anything here. We can’t make a difference – all meaning has been subtracted, we don’t know where anything comes from or where it goes. There’s no context for our lives. We’re all white, equal ciphers, instances of the same absurdity repeated over and over. We try to scratch some hope or mea

day for His kind mercy. But why pray? Everything is given to us. For protection? Why? Even if we die, we just wake up the next morning as if nothing had ever happened. Will praying hasten the search? I’ve seen no evidence of that. Why thank this God who has condemned us to an endless Hell? We are all slowly going crazy.

Our silences were getting longer. Our arguments more frequent. How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build? No purpose to accomplish? No meaning? No meaning – that was the monster that drove us away from one another in the end.

Purple Aardvark on Second South in Mountain Grove, Utah.”

Jorge Luis Borges from your world called “The Library of Babel.”

To remember love and know it is unattainable? To know love wanders somewhere light-years and light-years distant, ever knowing it is forever out of reach? Forever hidden?