Richard Krause

Insight into Myself

On my insight into myself: I never claim it directly. It is always partial, biased. It is always the result of my probing elsewhere. “I don't know, I don't know” is the litany that I use to find out. This nescience gives me the time, the leisure almost to observe my behavior, but always under the lifelong excuse of looking elsewhere, of probing for the truth of things. I am always its object, but the moment I state this I am lost and a wall of self-consciousness comes between me and who I think I am. I am always one remove from myself if I think it is me I'm taking into account. Only by ignoring myself does the double image of that natural self-consciousness about things refocus itself into only one person. The secret is that we can only observe one of ourselves at a time. When we observe others we imagine we are absent and our vision clears.