In the train of my thoughts, I am aware of the parentheses, the italics, the paragraphs, the need for a footnote here, an idea out of the bibliography there. In the plans I have for this next semester, some periods are blocked out, others underlined. On my memory's note pad with the agenda for lunch with...stand, right after the title of a new journal...When I tell you my thoughts, it's as if I were reading them off from inside me. To an alarming degree, the structure of the page is the outline of my thoughts, plans and memories...Even in the liveliest and most intimate conversations, I am reminded of books next to the faces of people.
---Ivan Illich.
The end of the year, a time to reflect on all you didn't do and didn't read and the people you didn't meet this year (and who said I couldn't do pessimism?).
As good as it gets, the best years of our life having slipped away? How presumptuous! No-one knows-he says, swapping his clown's hat for his Muslim one (or is it the other way around..I forget)-how things will turn out.
I think a part of you looks for rituals to offer you some sort of assurance in this shape-shifter's world; rituals like the same breakfast every Sunday, the same bookshop, or place on the Westbound central line train. You hope to see the same people at the shops/station-even though you never talk to them and have no inclination to do so. Just holding on to the most fleeting memory of continuity. Surround yourself with books..that always works since they, at least, never change and despite the curs-ed new technology will still be around for a while yet.
All these lists of 'best of...' are quite silly (though entertaining).
I have before me The Observer's 'Christmas Books' (1994). I think the Dougal stole this from the office. Somewhere, lost amidst the piles of scrap paper, misplaced documents, tattered files, and other miscellaneous rubbish, there lies a copy of another newspaper in which Berlin and other greats recommend their favourite books. At the time that seemed like an iconic selection..Braudel's Mediterranean and all. I guess that by now the rats have chewed their way through the reviews. The way of the world, I guess. Perhaps it's their insatiable hunger for ink or animal striving for warmth that has led to a kind of permanence-since that copy now remains 'iconic', not quite lost, but something to be searched for.
And of course, whilst everything has all but slipped away nothing is quite lost. Everything is up for grabs. Game on. I am here. And as long as I say 'I', albeit somewhat gingerly, the world still exists.
---Ivan Illich.
The end of the year, a time to reflect on all you didn't do and didn't read and the people you didn't meet this year (and who said I couldn't do pessimism?).
As good as it gets, the best years of our life having slipped away? How presumptuous! No-one knows-he says, swapping his clown's hat for his Muslim one (or is it the other way around..I forget)-how things will turn out.
I think a part of you looks for rituals to offer you some sort of assurance in this shape-shifter's world; rituals like the same breakfast every Sunday, the same bookshop, or place on the Westbound central line train. You hope to see the same people at the shops/station-even though you never talk to them and have no inclination to do so. Just holding on to the most fleeting memory of continuity. Surround yourself with books..that always works since they, at least, never change and despite the curs-ed new technology will still be around for a while yet.
All these lists of 'best of...' are quite silly (though entertaining).
I have before me The Observer's 'Christmas Books' (1994). I think the Dougal stole this from the office. Somewhere, lost amidst the piles of scrap paper, misplaced documents, tattered files, and other miscellaneous rubbish, there lies a copy of another newspaper in which Berlin and other greats recommend their favourite books. At the time that seemed like an iconic selection..Braudel's Mediterranean and all. I guess that by now the rats have chewed their way through the reviews. The way of the world, I guess. Perhaps it's their insatiable hunger for ink or animal striving for warmth that has led to a kind of permanence-since that copy now remains 'iconic', not quite lost, but something to be searched for.
And of course, whilst everything has all but slipped away nothing is quite lost. Everything is up for grabs. Game on. I am here. And as long as I say 'I', albeit somewhat gingerly, the world still exists.
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