If a wound hath befallen you, a wound like it hath already befallen others.
---Q: 3:140
I remember everything.
No, you remember nothing.
On certain days, at certain times, the light falls in a particular way. And we are transported to lives that are given up, aborted, and to strange places. These are the dead branches on which we sometimes float, effortlessly. It is as if the music had opened us up, striking some deeply familiar chord, as if we had found an unused room, full of discarded things on which only dust and time accumulates. A music box, a map coloured in with red and blue pencil, the coastline with ink, a tattered piece of cloth. They belong to and do not belong to us. Other hands have lovingly stroked them.
And now the memory of it fades. Unsure of ourselves we hold on ever more tightly. It cracks, it breaks, but never shatters and we wonder if the reflection is distorted by our own desire or something else...
We stammer, trying to recall half-forgotten words. What is meant by half-forgotten ! The tongue, like the hand, betrays us. What can their simple gestures convey of the heart's torment when we are in cellar, far from the gaze of any human being...when the cold dead eye stares, reducing us to nothing. Is it really any ? Why do you deceive yourself..like a mad person you sometimes say 'you' when you mean to say 'I'..you repeat yourself, as if that would help...I am what..
I walk diagonally across the field. The green has given way to the heavy brown in places. Some god might find meaning in this. The shadows cut deeply. Perhaps they have arisen from the very depths of the earth itself. Darkness seeking darkness. By walking I do not exist. Some do this by thinking, storing up counters on the grey squares of the mind.
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.
It is going. You want me to name you but amongst transient things, this flickering flame called life, is there anything more ephemeral than I?
What is this pain but the remembering off by heart? I cannot name you. I do not know you. I have never known you. All that remains is the longing not to forget.
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9 comments:
Thank goodness I am not a character in the movie! Whatever happened to I 'will' know you.
Longing not to forget is insufficent. When one longs to remember, it entails some sort of activity, may be a pilgrimage or a search ... a commemoration. Doesn't it?
Regards,
Astarte.
I don't know, what did happen to I 'will' know you?
Anyway, I think the film was about a certain bewilderment. Dazzled by the light, she closes her eyes, but still something remains, an after-image, a trace, a scar.
when one longs to remember one has already forgotten, no?
Who is to say what is sufficient, what is insufficient?
When one longs to remember, one wants to make sure that one never forgets, doesn't mean that one has already forgotten. At least that's the way I look at it.
Who decides what is sufficient/insufficient? May be there is a sense of what is due to something which was beautiful...
Regards,
Astarte.
But astarte, memory is always insufficient..that is what gives it it's sharpness. Memory is already the registering of an absence, of a something,a someone, that cannot be brought back: whence bitter-sweet memories.
But I like your idea of giving things their due. Just think that,as with hospitality, there's an awareness that some things can never be proportional, that for some things there will always be a radical insufficiency.
Take care,
b.
i like that, Billoo, how you formulated this with the awareness that somethings can never be proportional. radical insuffiency describes that very well. but there can be peace in that too.
antonia, you raise an intriguing point. I think you're right. At least for some people it seems there's an acceptance, or a sort of acceptance, that things had to be like this (and not that), that we will always fall short.that we will always fall.. Perhaps that is the very definition of our finitude or our lack of time?
From the outside this might seem fatalistic -and perhaps it is in some cases. But maybe you're right..maybe there is a kind of peace in this (I hope you write on this because I can't figure it out).
Perhaps the unknown ("ghayb") or the irruption of the unscripted in our lives is accepted. I see that at the everyday level all the time. But I can't help think that part of us aims to abolish that gap, the uncertainty, as well (isn't that what fantasy is?).
The Allama: 'Even if the Divine reveals His Face, I'll still take "perhaps" and "maybe".'
And yet the more I think about it, the more difficult it appears..what else could it be but an awareness of what is holy, a reverence, an awe for the strangeness that exists in the heart of the ordinary?
Keep well,
b.
yes it is intricated. it's a simple and plain or pure, good thing to feel, but very difficult to describe, this peace. and yes on the outside it may seem fatalistic (or negative even), maybe it even is, but in a good sense, such as in: being in agreement with life and the world and so on. There is certainly some connection to somehting ineffable. you say we will always fall - i have to think of this Rilke poem: Autumn
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
Translated by Robert Bly
(the translation isn't supergreat, but you get the idea i think...)
there is maybe some connection to some religious entity in this poem, but after all, it could be anything, life god, whatever.
Or maybe this feeling has also to do with giving. It's just there and one somehow can transport it, lay it open plainly, due to its richness for it certainly is a rich peace. hmmmn. difficult.
Anton, thank you so much. Lovely.
ta!
b.
Bills
My comment did not get published - I forgot the exact wording but I had urged you to focus on fiction - your writing is naturally moving in that direction
fine writing and nuanced thoughts
do it before SUML gets the better of you..
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