ghost of cohosts past

of those words that are immortal to me, exactly me and to know one else, for the good reason of no one knows them but perhaps that might change, there's a line of poetry that I say all the time:

"knowing was never ours to have."

it's from a poem by daniel vaccerelli, that dark and brooding poet from the xanga era, which isn't much longer than the line. here it reads:

explaining poetry often feels like a fool's game, but I think the phrase is a powerful negative capability for me, absent any context. The truth of the world is that we—all of us together—don't know anything about everything. And an even closer we—you and i—shows us an even more necessary release of the need to know. Sometimes you just let go, embracing the fact that you were never destined for omniscience... or even certainty. Prometheus had to bring the fire, we weren't born with it. We evolved to use tools and record what we can of the manifold experience; no destiny involved. From this hard scrabbling we—you and i—have made a place in a world, and the place we have made is a brief moment in the face of everything else.

Everything is on the other side of a broad white fog; everything only ever approximated. Listen to the stories people tell about the world, about themselves, about each other. Surely we know the difference—you and i—of whether the stars are gods or engines of fire or fusion reactors, or all three. Perhaps we carry these contradictions but still know them—you and i—knowing that the sun is a god if we were to have one, and yes the moon too, knowing that there's something to do with hydrogen and helium that gives us oxygen today. There's an essential mystery to the world and each other—you and i—that we don't even have the verbs or language to solve. Solving isn't the thing of it; living is. Knowing was never ours to have.