On the obstacle

This is Marcus arguing with himself. A few lines earlier in the same book he is fuming about the people who obstruct him: the liars, the ingrates, the ones who get in his way. Rather than let the complaint stand, he turns it over. The blockage, he decides, is not the end of the road but part of it. The thing that stops you can be worked into the next step, because your intention was never at the mercy of the obstacle in the first place.

Three hundred and sixty years ago this week, a fire broke out in a baker's shop on Pudding Lane. The Great Fire of London started on Sunday, 2 September 1666 in a baker's shop on Pudding Lane belonging to Thomas Farynor. Four days later most of the medieval city was ash. What rose in its place was not the old London rebuilt, but a wider, brick-and-stone city, with Wren's cathedral at its center. The ruin set the terms of what came after. Most of our own obstacles are smaller, but the logic holds: the thing in your way is also the material you have to work with.