time-being?
time, being.
For !
Does 'for' ground us, or point us somewhere else?
Say the words slowly; say them quickly; life is one. Or maybe it isn't. We are two. Time, being.
For a while I thought Calvino, Kadare were the thing..and there's no doubting the supreme intelligence in them (one mathematical, the other mythical). In both there is a strange correspondence between the human level and that of nature (the atomic in one, the land in the other, with their structure and rhythms sharing a likeness with those of the human being).
But, but..this is something else: James Salter's Light Years...the one thing needful? There is no one thing. I gave up marking passages and phrases with my lead pencil..there were too many.
But I've always believed, I know it's true, that any main branch leads you straight to the trunk . If you know one thing completely, it touches everything. But, of course you have to know it....
But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others . We turn to it as flowers to the sun...
What is the real meaning of these stories, he wonders, of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, honest fishermen who live in hovels. He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past , that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, that habit which gives us shape. ..He is preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is only a single hour , and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered. He longs for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but he cannot find the line, cannot recognize it...
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5 comments:
'For a while I thought Calvino, Kadare were the thing' - THE THING - this has made me laugh :-)
but you have convinced me, I really have to read Salter.
hi, b :-)
I was going to write 'the cheez' but then forgot the spelling..though I remember it was an Anglo-Indian word (from my Hobson-Jobson) and so I just put 'the thing' instead.
This post was written so poorly..didn't really convey what I wanted to say.
Hmm.
and what have you been up to? Is it snowing there?Get the camera or not? I notice you didn't respond to my offer to get you a chinese one for half the price! I dunno, some people are so hard to bargain with! :-)
Salter, yes, you must. I'm desperately searching for 'A sport and a past-time' but I don't think if I placed an order for it it would actually get here. Long story.
okay, do write back.
Here's some more Salter for you:
'There is no happiness like this happiness; quiet mornings, light from the river, the weekend ahead. They lived a Russian life, a rich life, interwoven, in which the misfortune of one , a failure, an illness, would stagger them all. It was like a garment, this life. Its beauty was outside, its warmth within'
take care,
b.
thank you for the quote, b, I love it so much that I even used it to answer to kubla in one of the comments, I don't know if you noticed.
no, I haven't got any camera and I don't know when I will, or if, because... well you know the story, I don't want to get upset again. now I am the happy owner of 5 laptops and one washing machine, can you believe that? CHHHHHHH
and trying desperately to sell 4 of those laptops, one is for me (and the washing machine for family). of course I will lose a lot of money because I have to sell cheaper that the market price (that much economy I have managed to understand myself, damn economic rules and damn those economy teachers :-) who knows whether I will get enough money in the end to buy the camera. maybe I will be just stuck with the computers haha.
now if you really want to help, then make me an offer for one of the laptops, or better for all of them :-P
so sorry, didn't realize you had the laptops *because* they didn't give you the money. How ridiculous!
Can't you sell them to friends or colleagues? I'd make an offer but I doubt the money or the computer would get through the Pakistani postal system.
thank you, b, you are so nice, really. so so nice. why would you be sorry for?
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