It's not enough to unpick representation as long as there remains any idea of the world. What a strange notion that is, world? The coherent totality of everything appearing out there? A totality however is a kind of mirage of reason: there are all sorts of things, and there are finite totalities but why an unbounded totality of things? But the vernacular world also is the people's world, the world you are born into and die out of, inseparable from consensus. You think of it that way as a special kind of place too, remembering the wonder of discovering it, how far you ventured out to embrace its promises before turning back towards life; the world of the world, the flesh and the devil, rather than that of the world, the soul and God; one realm among possible realms, dream worlds, fictional worlds, historical worlds, or indeed simply of possible worlds. The peculiar senses of in the world and of the world, of being worldly or unwordly, a man of the world or a woman of the world - what different connotations these have? The order of the world or the world order; the world as verb or to be without world. A mystery as rich to explore as the self, or richer.