Six AM and it was pitch black. In the sky a blinding white moon, a crescent sharper than any blade. I felt cold bite into my face. I drove the winding neighborhood street. Three black forms moved across a yard to pass just out of headlight range. Deer. Absolutely those wild animals were hungry. What motivates more than hunger?

Ten minutes of traffic, then I turned into the parking lot at Starbucks. To my left the horizon burned a thin line of fire, orange against black. The dashboard temperature gage read 0 degrees.

In a universe where
a divine sanction ensures
the eternality of the cosmic order
(Kepler’s universe),
immortality is akin to a natural property
of the human microcosm.
It is merely the logical extension
of the continuity of an order.

The universe could not change since
all is ordained by a higher decree.

By contrast,
as soon as that order begins to break up,
as soon as that transcendence is lost,
the cosmic order, like the human order,
emancipated from God and all finality,
becomes shifting and unstable;
it falls prey to entropy,

to the final dissipation of energy, and death.

The Illusion of the End by Jean Baudrillard, trans. by Chris Turner, Chapt. Immortality, Page 91

Have you not heard of that madman who
lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market
place. and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”

-As many of those who did not believe in God were standing
around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost?
asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another.
Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage?
emigrated? -Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with
his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We
have killed him-you and I. All of us are his murderers. But
how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who
gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were
we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither
is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all
suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward.
forward. in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are
we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel
the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not
night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light
lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the
noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell
nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decom-
pose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

…This tremendous event is still on its way,
still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.
Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars
requires time; deeds, though done,
still require time to be seen and heard.

The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, section The Madman, aphorism 125

Why juxtapose these two texts? The Gay Science was published in 1862. Baudrillard’s book was in the bookstores in 1994. “Thunder and Lightning require time.”

We are a few days into the Trump administration, already it becomes colder. And there is a stench in the air…