Roger Ebert: Universe

Editor's note -- Roger Ebert died on Thurs., April 4th from cancer. His blog inspired a few flippant posts here; my favorite is Dust, based on his blog post from April 2011. Now is the perfect time to link it again; it's about the nature of life and death in an incomprehensibly vast universe.

RT @ebertchicago Why the meaninglessness of the Universe consoles me. My new blog entry, just posted. 

A quintessence of dust

A message from light years away would probably miss me in my box of space and time, but I find that Art can shout to me across a few years or centuries, and it carries the same message: "Yes, I exist, and you are not alone."

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, 

how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and

admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! 

the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals--

and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? 

Man delights not me--nor woman neither, 

though by your smiling you seem to say so.

That's what we are, a quintessence of dust. That Shakespeare could so conclude, and then end with a little joke is, to me, a great comfort.