http://circuitous.org/bec/more/nabokov-letter.html
and interestingly
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/07/vladimir_nabokov_furious_darwi008971.html
Monday, October 18, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Plato, Nabokov
To be honest I had a mixed reaction to Republic. On one hand, I was quite taken aback by the strict rules of censorship, weeding out of weaklings etc. etc. On the other I found myself nodding vehemently in agreement whenever Plato or Plato in the guise of Socrates, chastised moral corruption. Which I think, is something most of us have observed at some point or the other about our world. And you read Republic and you'd think there alas, a great man who understood the depravity of human soul and then in turn you would recall all those times when someone stepped on your foot in the buzzing janpath, or forcefully inserted himself in between you and the door of the metro train, or the time someone betrayed you in love, or when your child did not follow the family path, and feel vindicated, as if Plato has given the last word on the matter, and in his towering 2300 year old voice, he has established a code of proper conduct of the soul... to speak metaphorically, he has anchored the ship of our soul.
But soon the smug satisfaction gave way to a sort of anxiety... is it true then what Plato says. And all that is to say about the soul, has he already said it?
If I was sitting there with Socrates, I would have asked him, 'Tell me Socrates, will you allow another Socrates to come after you?' Maybe Plato has somewhere answered that. I think Plato's assertions were not entirely wrong, his assumptions were. If you think the mind of a child will be 'corrupted' by image of bloodshed, it would not be wrong to assert that these images should be censored. Plato was taking the easiest way out in arranging his state and his soul, he would not make the effort to put the image in context, no, he will wipe the slate clean and start history at the point of his ascension, Plato the philosopher king.
Now curiously, where does Nabokov stand in all this. (I take delight in asking this question every time I react positively to something I read). Nabokov, in an essay on Madame Bovary, says: "Three forces make and mold a human being: heredity, environment, and the unknown agent X. Of these the second, environment, is by far the least important, while the last agent X, is by far the most influential." Nabokov stands for all the unknown agents (Xs) in the world. This I think would be hypothetical socratic dialogue with him on the propensity of people to classify actions as strict blacks and whites:
A: "Yes, you are right Nabokov, there are so many shades of gray."
Nabokov:"And what about the rest of the colors in the spectrum?"
A:"What do you mean? Black is for bad, white for good and grey for all the things in between."
Nabokov: But does that cover the entire range? When Humbert humbert desires Lolita, he is to be sure fully corrupt but there is something still more to him."
B: "Yes, Nabokov, other colors yes."
Nabokov: "But then why do people take good and bad actions, we should ask ourselves that?"
B: "Yes Nabokov, and that too, if I can venture a guess falls in the black-white scale?"
Nabokov: "But can't their motives have other dimensions, apart from black and white, like their actions."
C: "Yes, Nabokov. They surely can."
Nabokov: " So then the next question we ask ourselves is why do people have these motives?"
.
.
.
And so on. Of course, he will never tell us directly what he means. He will never have such a conversation in the first place, my guess. What he tells us is the futility of this line of enquiry (or maybe I'm telling us that).
Which does not mean that Nabokov does not approve of morality and permits and tolerates everything in the name of modernity. He criticizes his characters for lack of imagination, lack of divine inspiration or even inability for simple thought. But while Plato will put to death a pedophile, Nabokov might scorn at him, or even get inside his head and in a way complete dissect him.. because Nabokov is all the time concerned with his own divine sense, his own search for beauty. In our flaws, as in our goodness, he finds the basic ingredients of a painter - all shades and hues. And so if you will, think of how Plato's world will look in a painting.. a a grayscale versus a Nabokovian world of variations of shades.
And so in a strike against Plato the king, he will not fight for our freedom, he will fight for his own. And you will ask him does he not care about the rest of us. "Do you not want your people to be also free?" And he would humbly tell them that he cannot want anything on their behalf. "But then are we just fodder for your high literature?" And he would say, the purpose of art is not to capture and eat, but beautify, and if anything, they should be thankful to him for that.
A nabokov would be as indifferent to regimes as a river is to its terrain. Which is not to say that he is not effected by it. Or to make the counterpoint, its not that he will not lash out against it, or like a river, will not suddenly change his course in a whimsical fashion. It is just to say that the nabokov within a nabokov is all those things which make a river river and even that would be an unfair analogy. It is but a correspondence. And so we may cut the the soul in three parts or four or ten, he would always look for the next one. In fact, he would talk in terms of characteristics (which are many) and not in terms of parts (which are seemingly finite and independent of each other).
And so Nabokov's kingdom will be one of anarchy, of no code of conduct? To which I would say Nabokov's kingdom exists parallel to all our owns, and we may breach his space and tame more and more parts of his untrammeled consciousness, but we will never fully annex his kingdom which is essentially infinite. Unless we make the impossible effort of reproducing his entire literature, like the character in a Borges story who takes up the task of spontaneously writing word to word Don Quixote like Cervantes would have (without referring to the original of course).
Finally, what would Nabokov say about society, about need for harmony. I imagine so many people asking "Why Nabokov, will you beautify our lives rather than writing about it, rather than writing about our cause?" To which he would, I guess say, "if I write about your cause it becomes my own cause, and I don't believe the purpose of art is to advance one's cause". (This is a rather Socratic argument, but then what the heck). "Don't you care about us, Nabokov, at all? Why do you take delight in standing apart from us? We brought you up in the world, you depend on us, you are not an island? Do you suppose that you are special?" To which he would say, "I don't stand apart from you sirs, you keep running away and about, and from you madam I may take my bread and from you sir my butter and I assure you I'm thankful that, but I'm as unconcerned about these things as you are about the state of the roof above your head - you want it alright, and as long as its there you do not think a lot about it, because you have your businesses to look after and your cows to tend to". "So you care not about our health, our peace, our harmony?" "To point a bitter truth madam, at this point you are not concerned about my peace and my harmony, hurling so many questions at once... and as for harmony sir, let me tell you what I think of it, if harmony is the forced silence of a bunch of toddlers before a teacher arrives I don't give two hoots to it."
(Some day I will polish this essay)
(Incidentally, I was talking about not putting your words in your characters' mouth.)
But soon the smug satisfaction gave way to a sort of anxiety... is it true then what Plato says. And all that is to say about the soul, has he already said it?
If I was sitting there with Socrates, I would have asked him, 'Tell me Socrates, will you allow another Socrates to come after you?' Maybe Plato has somewhere answered that. I think Plato's assertions were not entirely wrong, his assumptions were. If you think the mind of a child will be 'corrupted' by image of bloodshed, it would not be wrong to assert that these images should be censored. Plato was taking the easiest way out in arranging his state and his soul, he would not make the effort to put the image in context, no, he will wipe the slate clean and start history at the point of his ascension, Plato the philosopher king.
Now curiously, where does Nabokov stand in all this. (I take delight in asking this question every time I react positively to something I read). Nabokov, in an essay on Madame Bovary, says: "Three forces make and mold a human being: heredity, environment, and the unknown agent X. Of these the second, environment, is by far the least important, while the last agent X, is by far the most influential." Nabokov stands for all the unknown agents (Xs) in the world. This I think would be hypothetical socratic dialogue with him on the propensity of people to classify actions as strict blacks and whites:
A: "Yes, you are right Nabokov, there are so many shades of gray."
Nabokov:"And what about the rest of the colors in the spectrum?"
A:"What do you mean? Black is for bad, white for good and grey for all the things in between."
Nabokov: But does that cover the entire range? When Humbert humbert desires Lolita, he is to be sure fully corrupt but there is something still more to him."
B: "Yes, Nabokov, other colors yes."
Nabokov: "But then why do people take good and bad actions, we should ask ourselves that?"
B: "Yes Nabokov, and that too, if I can venture a guess falls in the black-white scale?"
Nabokov: "But can't their motives have other dimensions, apart from black and white, like their actions."
C: "Yes, Nabokov. They surely can."
Nabokov: " So then the next question we ask ourselves is why do people have these motives?"
.
.
.
And so on. Of course, he will never tell us directly what he means. He will never have such a conversation in the first place, my guess. What he tells us is the futility of this line of enquiry (or maybe I'm telling us that).
Which does not mean that Nabokov does not approve of morality and permits and tolerates everything in the name of modernity. He criticizes his characters for lack of imagination, lack of divine inspiration or even inability for simple thought. But while Plato will put to death a pedophile, Nabokov might scorn at him, or even get inside his head and in a way complete dissect him.. because Nabokov is all the time concerned with his own divine sense, his own search for beauty. In our flaws, as in our goodness, he finds the basic ingredients of a painter - all shades and hues. And so if you will, think of how Plato's world will look in a painting.. a a grayscale versus a Nabokovian world of variations of shades.
And so in a strike against Plato the king, he will not fight for our freedom, he will fight for his own. And you will ask him does he not care about the rest of us. "Do you not want your people to be also free?" And he would humbly tell them that he cannot want anything on their behalf. "But then are we just fodder for your high literature?" And he would say, the purpose of art is not to capture and eat, but beautify, and if anything, they should be thankful to him for that.
A nabokov would be as indifferent to regimes as a river is to its terrain. Which is not to say that he is not effected by it. Or to make the counterpoint, its not that he will not lash out against it, or like a river, will not suddenly change his course in a whimsical fashion. It is just to say that the nabokov within a nabokov is all those things which make a river river and even that would be an unfair analogy. It is but a correspondence. And so we may cut the the soul in three parts or four or ten, he would always look for the next one. In fact, he would talk in terms of characteristics (which are many) and not in terms of parts (which are seemingly finite and independent of each other).
And so Nabokov's kingdom will be one of anarchy, of no code of conduct? To which I would say Nabokov's kingdom exists parallel to all our owns, and we may breach his space and tame more and more parts of his untrammeled consciousness, but we will never fully annex his kingdom which is essentially infinite. Unless we make the impossible effort of reproducing his entire literature, like the character in a Borges story who takes up the task of spontaneously writing word to word Don Quixote like Cervantes would have (without referring to the original of course).
Finally, what would Nabokov say about society, about need for harmony. I imagine so many people asking "Why Nabokov, will you beautify our lives rather than writing about it, rather than writing about our cause?" To which he would, I guess say, "if I write about your cause it becomes my own cause, and I don't believe the purpose of art is to advance one's cause". (This is a rather Socratic argument, but then what the heck). "Don't you care about us, Nabokov, at all? Why do you take delight in standing apart from us? We brought you up in the world, you depend on us, you are not an island? Do you suppose that you are special?" To which he would say, "I don't stand apart from you sirs, you keep running away and about, and from you madam I may take my bread and from you sir my butter and I assure you I'm thankful that, but I'm as unconcerned about these things as you are about the state of the roof above your head - you want it alright, and as long as its there you do not think a lot about it, because you have your businesses to look after and your cows to tend to". "So you care not about our health, our peace, our harmony?" "To point a bitter truth madam, at this point you are not concerned about my peace and my harmony, hurling so many questions at once... and as for harmony sir, let me tell you what I think of it, if harmony is the forced silence of a bunch of toddlers before a teacher arrives I don't give two hoots to it."
(Some day I will polish this essay)
(Incidentally, I was talking about not putting your words in your characters' mouth.)
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Yellow Rose
There are I believe two very disturbing kind of 'mistakes' to make in fiction:
- to put in your characters' mouth your words, thoughts and emotions
- to put in your characters' mouth your readers' words, thoughts and emotions
How difficult it is to conceive of characters that are truly alive, that are neither shaped by some beliefs, experiences and thoughts of the author, nor realized by the emotions and response of the readers. They exist sort of on their own, even though only a few of the readers might discern the full extent of their lives.. which is but true for any living being.. only a few people around us will be really able to see what we are about.. others usually see what they want to or what they could.
But is it realistic to assume that authors and readers can keep these influences out. Also is it even a right demand to make? To the second I would say, depends what is a particular story about? If it is a historical fictionalized account then it might not be a right thing to do.
A visual example comes to mind.. the portraits made by 14th-15th century painters vis-a-vis paintings of impressionists and surrealists. The difference between being completely inspired by and loyal to certain objects in the apparent world versus a sort of stylized art. The content is from our world, the characters are from our world, but the artist renders them in his style.. capturing by whatever means possible the intricate workings of light and shade, shadow and colors, life and fate. The author is the creator of the world he writes about, and not by maudlin tragedies or force of ideas, but with a disinterested involvement even indulgence in this world can he truly mirror it and make it alive. In a good work he writes not for one person, one character, one family.. but for life itself. And on its mysterious ways. Sort of flirting with the ever elusive lady the fate. He is astonished by her mischievousness, yet at the same time flattered by her and eternally devoted to her.. and the content can vary from the civil wars in Americas, to a lonely trip to East England, to a butterfly man and a dying poet of whom Borges tells us:
".. and he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it; and that the tall proud volumes casting a golden shadow in a corner were not - as his vanity had dreamed - a mirror of the world, but rather one thing more added to the world.
Marino achieved this illumination on the eve of his death, and Homer and Dante may have achieved it as well."
(Yellow Rose, Dreamtigers, Borges)
Of course, its difficult to achieve, but worth a try?
- to put in your characters' mouth your words, thoughts and emotions
- to put in your characters' mouth your readers' words, thoughts and emotions
How difficult it is to conceive of characters that are truly alive, that are neither shaped by some beliefs, experiences and thoughts of the author, nor realized by the emotions and response of the readers. They exist sort of on their own, even though only a few of the readers might discern the full extent of their lives.. which is but true for any living being.. only a few people around us will be really able to see what we are about.. others usually see what they want to or what they could.
But is it realistic to assume that authors and readers can keep these influences out. Also is it even a right demand to make? To the second I would say, depends what is a particular story about? If it is a historical fictionalized account then it might not be a right thing to do.
A visual example comes to mind.. the portraits made by 14th-15th century painters vis-a-vis paintings of impressionists and surrealists. The difference between being completely inspired by and loyal to certain objects in the apparent world versus a sort of stylized art. The content is from our world, the characters are from our world, but the artist renders them in his style.. capturing by whatever means possible the intricate workings of light and shade, shadow and colors, life and fate. The author is the creator of the world he writes about, and not by maudlin tragedies or force of ideas, but with a disinterested involvement even indulgence in this world can he truly mirror it and make it alive. In a good work he writes not for one person, one character, one family.. but for life itself. And on its mysterious ways. Sort of flirting with the ever elusive lady the fate. He is astonished by her mischievousness, yet at the same time flattered by her and eternally devoted to her.. and the content can vary from the civil wars in Americas, to a lonely trip to East England, to a butterfly man and a dying poet of whom Borges tells us:
".. and he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it; and that the tall proud volumes casting a golden shadow in a corner were not - as his vanity had dreamed - a mirror of the world, but rather one thing more added to the world.
Marino achieved this illumination on the eve of his death, and Homer and Dante may have achieved it as well."
(Yellow Rose, Dreamtigers, Borges)
Of course, its difficult to achieve, but worth a try?
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Tagore
More quotes...
~ If you want me to take to butchering human beings, you must break up that wholeness of my humanity through some discipline which makes my will dead, my thoughts numb, my movements automatic and then from the dissolution of the complex personal man will come out that abstraction, that destructive force, which has no relation to human truth, and therefore can be easily brutal or mechanical
- Turn a tree into a log and it will burn for you, but it will never bear living flowers and fruits.
~ Wisdom of the Nation is not in its faith in humanity but its complete distrust.
~ What is a Nation? It is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power. This organization incessantly keeps up the insistence of the population on becoming strong and efficient. But this strenuous effort after strength and efficiency drains man's energy from his higher nature where he is self-sacrificing and creative.
~ Those of us in India who have come under the delusion that mere political freedom will make us free have accepted their lessons from the West as the gospel truth and lost their faith in humanity. We must remember whatever weakness we cherish in our society will become the source of danger in politics. The same inertia which leads us to our idolatry of dead forms in social institutions (referring to caste system) will create in our politics prison houses with immovable walls. The narrowness of sympathy which makes it possible for us to impose upon a considerable portion of humanity the galling yoke of inferiority will assert itself in our politics in creating tyranny of injustice.
~ I am willing to acknowledge that there is a law of demand and supply and an infatuation of man for more things than are good for him. And yet I will persist in believing that there is such a thing as the harmony of completeness in humanity, where poverty does not take away his riches, where defeat may lead him to victory, death to immortality, and in the compensation of Eternal Justice those who are the last may yet have their insult transmuted into a golden triumph.
~ If you want me to take to butchering human beings, you must break up that wholeness of my humanity through some discipline which makes my will dead, my thoughts numb, my movements automatic and then from the dissolution of the complex personal man will come out that abstraction, that destructive force, which has no relation to human truth, and therefore can be easily brutal or mechanical
- Turn a tree into a log and it will burn for you, but it will never bear living flowers and fruits.
~ Wisdom of the Nation is not in its faith in humanity but its complete distrust.
~ What is a Nation? It is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power. This organization incessantly keeps up the insistence of the population on becoming strong and efficient. But this strenuous effort after strength and efficiency drains man's energy from his higher nature where he is self-sacrificing and creative.
~ Those of us in India who have come under the delusion that mere political freedom will make us free have accepted their lessons from the West as the gospel truth and lost their faith in humanity. We must remember whatever weakness we cherish in our society will become the source of danger in politics. The same inertia which leads us to our idolatry of dead forms in social institutions (referring to caste system) will create in our politics prison houses with immovable walls. The narrowness of sympathy which makes it possible for us to impose upon a considerable portion of humanity the galling yoke of inferiority will assert itself in our politics in creating tyranny of injustice.
~ I am willing to acknowledge that there is a law of demand and supply and an infatuation of man for more things than are good for him. And yet I will persist in believing that there is such a thing as the harmony of completeness in humanity, where poverty does not take away his riches, where defeat may lead him to victory, death to immortality, and in the compensation of Eternal Justice those who are the last may yet have their insult transmuted into a golden triumph.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Tagore
I started reading essays on Nationalism by Tagore yesterday. In the first reading it might just read like any polemic against the western civilization. However, when we rewind ourselves back to his time, a time which was still not completely mechanized, when the pace of life was different, and sources of information relatively scarce, his essays come out partly as analytical but mostly brilliantly prophetic. It is usually said of poets that they can see what lies ahead. Time for them is not an unravelling phenomenon but rather like a flowing river, they can see where it begins and where it ends.
And here is one man fighting for the preeminence of spiritual over material, appealing to the 'inner' nature of man... terms which are now considered as being devoid of any real sense, but I guess the poet would say that we have lost our ability to comprehend, to experience and to see things that way...
There are things that cannot wait. You have to rush and run and march, if you must fight or take the best place in the market. You strain your nerves and are on the alert, when you chase opportunities that are always on their wings. But there are ideals which do not play hide and seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to flower, from flower to fruit; they require infinite space and heaven ' s light to mature and the fruits that they produce can survive years of insult and neglect. The East with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops. Europe, while busily speeding to her engagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window to the reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed cannot but think him as slow and ever receding backwards. But the speed comes to its end, the engagement loses its meaning and the hungry heart clamours for food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. For if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement, love waits and beauty and the wisdom of suffering and the fruits of patient devotion and reverent meekness of simple faith. And thus shall wait the East till her time comes.
During his time may be the distinction between the East and West were pronounced. However, what we can take away from here is not the clear cut divide between the two civilizations but rather two very different aspirations of the same self, one which wants to lead the other that is lead by the harmonies of nature. One that delights in competition the other that thrives on co-operation.
" I know what a risk one runs from the vigorously athletic crowds to be styled an 'idealist' in these days, when thrones have lost their dignity and prophets have become an anachronism, when the sound that drowns all voices is the noise of the market-place. Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills,-—with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance,—the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiments,—that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the bounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies."
I'm glad he immortalized idealism through his works... and of course the sheer delight of being a poet, a prophet, a seer and believer...
And here is one man fighting for the preeminence of spiritual over material, appealing to the 'inner' nature of man... terms which are now considered as being devoid of any real sense, but I guess the poet would say that we have lost our ability to comprehend, to experience and to see things that way...
There are things that cannot wait. You have to rush and run and march, if you must fight or take the best place in the market. You strain your nerves and are on the alert, when you chase opportunities that are always on their wings. But there are ideals which do not play hide and seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to flower, from flower to fruit; they require infinite space and heaven ' s light to mature and the fruits that they produce can survive years of insult and neglect. The East with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops. Europe, while busily speeding to her engagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window to the reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed cannot but think him as slow and ever receding backwards. But the speed comes to its end, the engagement loses its meaning and the hungry heart clamours for food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. For if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement, love waits and beauty and the wisdom of suffering and the fruits of patient devotion and reverent meekness of simple faith. And thus shall wait the East till her time comes.
During his time may be the distinction between the East and West were pronounced. However, what we can take away from here is not the clear cut divide between the two civilizations but rather two very different aspirations of the same self, one which wants to lead the other that is lead by the harmonies of nature. One that delights in competition the other that thrives on co-operation.
" I know what a risk one runs from the vigorously athletic crowds to be styled an 'idealist' in these days, when thrones have lost their dignity and prophets have become an anachronism, when the sound that drowns all voices is the noise of the market-place. Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills,-—with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance,—the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiments,—that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the bounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies."
I'm glad he immortalized idealism through his works... and of course the sheer delight of being a poet, a prophet, a seer and believer...
Friday, October 1, 2010
on childhood..
I sit on the roof overlooking a vast stretch of land underneath. Rows of streets with moving red yellow lights, dots entering exiting little grey brown matchboxes, yellow-green lawns speckled here and there like pattern of clouds in the sky, at some places dense at others almost fading to pale green and white, tapering at a corner bordering the narrow exit. There is nothing in the view which the eye can hold on to. No river with a sailboat rowing across, no flock of birds migrating at this time of the year. Weary, my gaze falls inward. Slowly a mist forms and a form appears out of it, lean and tall, but the face is unclear almost hidden in the smoke of dust. He comes and sits next to me. And I start talking. Talking about the time I enacted a poem on stage in a yellow satin dress with big silver polka dots, and then later the little red plastic scooter I got as a prize I never can recall what for. Or the time when I was on the terrace of a house I no longer remember ,attending my best friend's birthday party. I also see myself apprehensive unsure, standing in front of my father to whom I've just handed my first poem, and he looks at it and the sketches I've done for illustration and marvels at the fact that I've already mastered the use of comma and full stop. There are so many anecdotes I recall from my childhood, which is now almost obscure to me, like it wasn't me who lived it. These instances might as well belong to someone else, yet I strain my memory to find more recollections of me, to link that person or person to me. And he listens to me patiently, with a smile on his face which is still covered in the mist and is now glowing. It's as if he already knows what I'm about to say next. I want to talk to him about right now, yet I find myself drifting more and more into the past.
There are times when the space immediately around you becomes so thin, transparent that you don't even know it exists apart from you. When you look up at the sky and stare instead at your own past, like looking into the magic ball. This quality of space around me right now fills me with a strange kind of sorrow, my head becomes numb from all the memories yearning to come out, yet I'm unaware of their individual presence. The smoky misty form never appears, day and night I go to sleep like a phantom living out of time, in an sequence which no longer makes any impression on my mind. Pages after pages are read yet what strikes me are the images not the story, as if our true memories of people and places are just stamp marks - blue green red, unchanging and sporadic, while the day to day details are the black backgrounds, now lost forever. I can string together little stories and bigger stories out of little ones, weaving a narrative of my childhood, yet there would be no voice guiding it, no one whispering in my ear, telling me about the course my life would take.
There are times when the space immediately around you becomes so thin, transparent that you don't even know it exists apart from you. When you look up at the sky and stare instead at your own past, like looking into the magic ball. This quality of space around me right now fills me with a strange kind of sorrow, my head becomes numb from all the memories yearning to come out, yet I'm unaware of their individual presence. The smoky misty form never appears, day and night I go to sleep like a phantom living out of time, in an sequence which no longer makes any impression on my mind. Pages after pages are read yet what strikes me are the images not the story, as if our true memories of people and places are just stamp marks - blue green red, unchanging and sporadic, while the day to day details are the black backgrounds, now lost forever. I can string together little stories and bigger stories out of little ones, weaving a narrative of my childhood, yet there would be no voice guiding it, no one whispering in my ear, telling me about the course my life would take.
(after reading Rings of Saturn.)
(don't tell me you never had imaginary friends. Mine were not exactly imaginary.. its interesting that I usually had/have imaginary conversations with real people. Had the contrary been true, I would have been a conjurer of fantastic worlds!)
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