Noon Star

The Moment

As one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: "what really was that which just struck?" so we sometimes rub our ears "afterward" and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, "what really was that which we have just experienced?" and moreover "who 'are' we really?" and, afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our "being"--and alas! miscount them. --So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we "have" to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law "Each is furtherst from himself" applies to all eternity-- we are not "men of knowledge" with respect to ourselves.
Friedrich Nietzsche.