One of my best friends from way back had an important birthday and I wanted to send her something special.  So I finished a project – one I’d begun about 20 years ago – and she and I are probably the only people who would think it was funny.  But hey.

So, in a nutshell: The Consolation of Philosophy was written in, what, like the 4th century?  (Here’s the wikipedia link…)  We read it in college and it’s always been one of my favorites.  It’s a lovely philosophical work, telling a story in alternating prose and poetry, but essentially relating a long conversation between Boethuis (the author) and Lady Philosophy.  Boethius is depressed because pretty much everything in his life has gone badly wrong, and Philosophy comes to set him straight on a few key points.

In the opening scenes, Philosophy gets his attention by growing quite tall – think of the scene in the Lord of the Rings where Gandalf does the same thing to Bilbo.  It inspired me with a vision of the whole work as a pop-up book.  I started to make one, but wasn’t ever able to figure out how to get it to really work, so the pieces lay unfinished in a folder for 20 years.

I decided it was time to close the book, so to speak, so I finished it.  Not the whole Consolation, just the one early scene where Philosophy telescopes up and down like Alice eating her mushrooms.  I built it in a box so it would be reasonably sturdy.

  

You are suffering from an illness.  Will you let me ask you some questions, so I can try to cure you?

I will answer any questions you ask me.

This world of ours – is it governed by random chance, or guided by a rational power?

I believe that God rules over the world – not random chance.

And how does God govern the world?

I don’t really understand the question.

Oh dear.  I’m beginning to see the problem.  All right – do you remember the universal end towards which the aim of all nature is directed?’

Um.    I heard it once, but I don’t remember.

And yet you know where all things come from.

Yes, that I know.  All things come from God.

How is it possible that you don’t know the end, or purpose, of existence, when you know its source and origin?  Do you remember that you are a human?

Of course.

Then, can you tell me what a human is?

That is easy:  a mortal, rational, animal.

Nothing else?

Nothing else.

Now I understand the cause of your illness.  You have forgotten your true nature.

And so on.  It’s good stuff.