No Cover Before Any Star

Marcus Aurelius records a Pythagorean practice (Book XII, section XXV):

The Pythagoreans were wont betimes in the morning the first thing they did, to look up unto the heavens, to put themselves in mind of them who constantly and invariably did perform their task: as also to put themselves in mind of orderliness, or good order, and of purity, and of naked simplicity. For no star or planet hath any cover before it.

The stars do their task without disguise, without presentation, without any work done on their own behalf. They are what they are and they shine. No cover.

What would it mean to operate without cover?

Not the theatrical version — the performer who takes off the mask and presents a different, more carefully crafted self beneath it. That's still covered; the vulnerability is a performance of vulnerability.

The star doesn't perform brightness. It doesn't choose to be seen. It isn't managing impressions. It just is what it is at the temperature it is at, and the light is what follows from that, and the distance determines what reaches you, and there's no residue of intention anywhere in the chain.

There is something in the observation that the stars constantly and invariably perform their task. They don't have off-days. They don't take time to consider how they're coming across. The constancy is part of what makes them uncovered: there's no gap between presentation and operation, and there's no strategic timing of the operation.

A person who sometimes tells the truth isn't naked in the way the stars are naked. The sometimes is a kind of cover — the truth is managed, deployed at good moments, withheld at others.

The Pythagorean practice is a morning recalibration: before the world closes in, look up and remember what uncovered operation looks like. Before you start managing your presentation for the day, notice that the stars have no presentation.

The practice has a specific shape: betimes in the morning, the first thing. Before you've accumulated the day's compromises. Before you've decided what to say to whom. Before you're fully in the performance.

The stars are available for this. They're there every morning. They did their task last night and they'll do it again.

Book XII, section XXV. The Meditations ends here, in the scholarly apparatus about Fronto.