After he'd given up on all theories he found he still had to deal with theories since he was himself merely such a one, a theory of the self, or the mind, or awareness or presence, or a theory of theories, a speculation on the spectator. The absurdity of this made it clear that there was no one to be there, simply or not, to be the seeker or the enjoyer or to the play the fool. But negation was just as partial as assertion, when what was in play was some kind of split in being that caused it slide over itself and significantly, necessarily, fail to come together. It could be that the idea of a hindrance would arise, to give him work, as if hands somewhere were trying to smooth something out with gestures and soft pats but only leaving it rougher, the side effects being greater than the effects. What he wanted to think of as interiority always revealed itself as ulteriority. But even the disingenuousness was not quite what it seemed, some fraction of an innocent question was harboured within it. A not knowing that again and again, beneath the surface of all the imposture that is the cost of living like this, puts out a probe, It tries to coax a response from the silence, to utter a question that is already its own answer, but not yet known to be, not able to be so known, until the silence deigns to reclaim it, the absence of sight, or speculation, resolved into the soundless sound.