Inside ...

... or outside: Where is my mind?

The world can’t be its own best representation because the world doesn’t represent anything; least of all itself. The world doesn’t mean anything and it isn’t about anything; it just is.

I wonder. Compare this from Rest for the Weary, which I linked to earlier today:

The way to make the most of this life is to take it seriously. Howard is particularly good in talking about the word solemn in Eliot's description in "East Coker" of his 17th-century ancestors dancing: "joined in circles / Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter / Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes." Solemn here does not mean grim—how could it when applied to dancing? It retains, says Howard, its medieval sense of "both joyous and freighted with significance." Nothing is solemn in a random, solely material, and therefore trivial world. But a world that has at its heart a still point that gives order to everything revolving around it is a solemn world—one freighted with significance—and therefore one where joy is possible.