There is a way a small island rises from the ocean affronting all reason. It is a chunk of chaos pounded into visibility ex nihilo: here rough, here smooth, shaped just so by a matrix of physical necessities too weird to contemplate, here instead of there, here instead of not at all. It is a fantastic utterance, as though I were to open my mouth and emit a French horn, or a vase, or a knob of tellurium. It smacks of folly, of first causes.
