Philosophy

Nihilism, but not in a negative sense—such was his thought, what else to call it? Like snow inside a novelty snow globe, vague possibility descended from probability, descended from likelihood and certainty. Now not even air. Those great words discussed in college— truth, beauty, justice, which had come to embarrass him, like teasing bare-breasted girls in postcards sent from Polynesian islands that each year he had found less likely; absolutes faded like old shirts, as still he tried to create from stray thoughts as if out of wood- chips and mud, the old certainties he once loved, the believable lie.