2. Finitude is a quality of human existence so pervasive that we seldom consider it as such. It is breathing air. It is eating and drinking. It is falling short of our aims. It is our surprise at finding that the life we lead and the place we live it in, things we thought we knew, are both more and less than we supposed. Finitude imposes limits; it also offers opportunity. It is the condition that makes artistic creation possible: it gives us line, dimension, tempo and meter, assonance and dissonance, color, light, darkness. . . . Finitude is death; it is also birth. It is the substrate of desire and enjoyment as also of loss and anguish. And it is an ongoing affront to our desire to conceive and think and aspire without limits.