It takes more mistakes, more purely random chances, more chaos and irrelevance to produce the epic than the sordid yarn, or the hero than the common man. Romance, or our belief in it, is our genuine undoing.
Yet there is progress of a sort, I could admit; we once believed in happy hunting grounds, houris, real palaces and places in the sky, and man-shaped gods. Nowadays, amongst those with the wit to realise their predicament, a more sophisticated spirituality prevails; an infinite nonsensicalism replacing and displacing all, so that, one day, when all we here are dust, particle and wave-form, those who follow us will see just that as a deal more continuity than ever we deserved.
And within our little sphere, even mortality is mortal, and there is an end to endings, and the days; not endless.
By an unholy power, by itself meaningless, as senseless as it is implacable and irresistible coerced, we should know at last that all else but another knowing to consciousness is inimical, and that our love dies with us, not the reverse. (So long lives nothing, so long live nothing, so long.)
On the other hand, maybe it’s just as they say.
But I doubt it, and I’ll take my chances, like all else, with me.
The night points me at the earth-shadow cone’s far point, as though to aim me at its farthest mark. Ah, discomfort me all you will, idiot star and accomplice rock. And, dark bird, do your most predictable, for what I’ve joined and what I’ve left, what I’ve done and what neglected, what I’ve felt and what dismissed, what I’ve been and what not been, matters and means, signifies and is less than one half thought in any one of us, and none the worse - and certainly none the better - for that.
Let me die, let me go; I’ve said my piece, refused to make it, and now - is that the dawn? Is this some sleep, or do I dream, or can I now hear reveille and the bugle’s closing call? - I face my future, turn my back on a lifetime’s desolation and on these dumb persecutors and am duly raised, brought up again, elevated glorious and triumphant to skies the colour of blood and roses, sneer at the dice that tumble (yes yes; die! die! Iacta est alea, we who are about to die despise you), laugh at cheers that rise, buoying me, and with that salute my end.
Iain Banks, A Song of Stone
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