A common nature. Something wonderful about that phrase. Very old-world. Your mind a blank, a complete and utter blank after all those hours staring at the walls. And even worse: an awareness that it is blank. For a terrible few seconds, there it was, grasping at something, anything, to fill the void. But like a man in a desert, it had no sense of the past or the future, just the awful immediacy of the present (and who said I couldn't do existential?!). The human mind, all at sea, without images, memory, pettiness, 'doors'. As useless and as pure as medieval Latin.
The King's English:
'We are all of us held together by words; and when words go, nothing much remains'
(I hesitate to comment on the Queen's)
A recent article in the NYRB by Tim Parks asks whether we should feel guilty about not finishing a book? As someone who's started but been unable or unwilling to complete at least fifteen books you will not be surprised that my answer is yes-and no. Reminded you a bit of Dyer's fabulous essay, 'Mir's syndrome'. Perhaps a childish reluctance to admit that the story doesn't always hang together; that we need a sense of 'wholeness' (even if dimly perceived) for things to make sense (Iris M: 'we intuit unity').
, ; :
Primitive marks. Of what? The things that cannot be said, require other marks. A pause, perhaps? Or maybe they indicate what hasn't yet been said, what's still to come...
They are more powerful more imposing more pretentious than a comma but they are a comma all the same. They really have within them deeply within them fundamentally within them the comma nature.
---Gertrude Stein.
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3 comments:
more blank walls for your blank mind to contemplate :-)
http://towardsafuturetome.blogspot.com/2012/03/you-must-go-on.html
(actually because it seemed so fitting for the King's words)
R
It's strange how one's mind wanders when looking at blank walls! on the one hand, you think you're looking out into nothingness; on the other, you are faced with a blank canvas in which anything can happen.
will look at this thing now.
'the king's speech' was a reference to a book by that name and the words were from the intro written by the author's son, martin amis.
Thanks for your self-indulginng musings on the comma nature. Reminded me of a famous line: this is the breath, this is the comma...in that sense, everything's comma.
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