extending into the most extreme unusualness, wonder no longer encounters anything that could offer it an escape. It no longer knows the way out but knows itself solely as being relegated to the most unusual of the usual in everything and anything: beings as beings.
While wonder must venture out into the most extreme unusualness of everything, it is at the same time cast back wholly on itself, knowing that it is incapable o f penetrating the unusualness by way of explanation, since that would precisely be to destroy it. Wonder knows no way into the unusualness o f what is most usual of all, as little as it knows a way out—it is simply placed before the unusualness of the usual, in the midst of the usual in everything.
Not knowing the way out or the way in, wonder dwells in a between, between the most usual, beings, and their unusualness, their "is." It is wonder that first liberates this.between as the between and separates it out. Wonder—understood transitively— brings forth the showing of what is most usual in its unusualness. Not knowing the way out or the way in, between the usual and the unusual, is not helplessness, for wonder as such does not desire help but instead precisely opens up this between, which is impervious to any entrance or escape, and must constantly occupy it. Wonder does not divert itself from the usual but on the contrary adverts to it, precisely as what is the most unusual of everything and in everything. Insofar as this disposition turns to the whole and stands in the whole, it is called a basic disposition.
We said that in wonder what is most usual of everything and of anything, thus everything itself, becomes the most unusual. This