Merry Christmas
We
are like
shop-windows,
where we ourselves
are constantly arranging,
concealing, or setting in the foreground
those supposed qualities which others attribute to us
—in order to
deceive
ourselves.
The Dawn of Day* by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 385
*There are many dawns which have yet to shed their light.—RIG-VEDA
Please, please avoid thinking overly much about Christmas… There’s tinsel, and a lot of red and green around etc. We are put upon to remain child-like, enchanted by the Marshall Field’s display window. It is impossible “to think” about Christmas or about life without becoming ironic.
We humans only have surface appearances to go on, to “clue us in” to the state of things concealed by those very appearances. As to my and your “supposed qualities”… all of those are elicited by circumstances, dynamic, always changing, by no means fixed, enduring qualities to be counted upon. How do I appear to others?
There’s no doubt that I do comport myself, a vanity freighted attempt to improve arrangement of the ornaments on the tree.
