i don't know why. i'm just not able to get the words out anymore. i'm not moving forward, only being in moments, and sometimes i forget how long it's been, since anything. perhaps it's that my world has curled up into itself. i don't know. i don't know what i'm waiting for.
She told him of ship voyages she had taken to places he had never heard of, and stories he knew were all untrue, were bad not-truths, even, but he nodded and tried to convince himself to be convinced, tried to believe her, because he knew that the origin of a story is always an absence, and he wanted her to live among presences. In Siberia, she said, there are couples who make love from hundreds of miles apart, and in Austria there is a princess who tattooed the image of her lover's body onto her body, so that when she looked in the mirror she would see him, and and and on the other side of the Black Sea is a stone woman - I have never seen it, but my aunt has - who came to life because of her sculptor's love!
today? maybe i haven't anything to say, even here, except about these books which i love so dearly but still are not what i am thinking of. and that's all right? to give you these excerpts (from Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer) and say nothing? but it must be; there isn't, after all, anything to say..
He told her his darkest secret: that unlike other boys, his love for his mother had never diminished, not even the smallest bit since he was a child, and please don't laugh at me for telling you this, and please don't think any less of me, but I would rather have a kiss from her than anything in the world.
"If humans were no longer in the business simply of reproduction and replication (and they had not even had this in the Garden of Eden!) if they had to struggle for their living, then was this not a mercy that they were thus part of a nature red in tooth and claw: otherwise, how boring! But in this set-up what would be a state of grace? There was still a natural world to be redeemed, to be put right, was there? Humans had felt that they were chosen by God for such a task (or they had chosen such a God to explain their feelings of being chosen: what was the difference!) but now this whole knot, this tie, was unravelling: so what was it to be human? If they had no task, then indeed what were humans except particular lumps of matter. What had seemed to define them had been a relationship to God--whether this had been a dream, a fabrication, something to be denied, or conceivably a reality--but what had been their experience? In so far as they had felt the world was wrong, there was the implication that it might be put to rights; or at least that there might be a way of enduring it rather than not. And glimpses, experiences, of this, might be a state of grace?"
nicholas mosley, the hesperides tree p.149 (dalkey archive press)
Estragon (rendu à toute l'horreur de sa situation).--Je dormais. (Avec reproche.) Pourquoi tu ne me laisses jamais dormir? Vladimir-- Je me sentais seul. Estragon-- J'ai fait un rêve. Vladimir-- Ne le raconte pas! Estragon-- Je rêvais que... Vladimir-- NE LE RACONTE PAS! Estragon (geste vers l'univers).-- Celui-ci te suffit? (Silence.) Tu n'es pas gentil, Didi. A qui veux-tu que je raconte mes cauchemars privés, sinon à toi? Vladimir-- Qu'ils restent privés. Tu sais bien que je ne supporte pas ça.
and of course translated (if you see errors in the translation, let me know..
Estragon wakes with a start.
Estragon (restored to all the horror of his situation)-- I was sleeping. (reproachfully) Why do you never let me sleep? Vladimir-- I felt lonely. Estragon-- I had a dream. Vladimir-- Don't tell me! Estragon-- I dreamt that... Vladimir-- DON'T TELL ME! Estragon (gestures to the universe)-- This one is enough for you? (Silence.) It's not kind of you, Didi. Who can I tell my private nightmares to, if not to you? Vladimir: Let them stay private. You know I can't bear them.
and you know, i was going to write for a few hours. screw it. my books are waiting.. much to read.
but i do want to write a story. tricky. i want it to relate to a chess board/pieces in some way, but not really to the game itself (part of the point is to be that the game is incomprehensible to the pieces, possibly even to the players). i want no more than three characters, two is better. i will probably write it in first person. the pieces i am chiefly concerned with are pawn, knight, and queen (possibly rook). it should of course form into a short allegory. if this begins to exceed thirty pages, i will abandon it (unless it becomes my child and is a very very good child.. then i might just have to keep it); i do *not* want a long piece.
so for all you wonderful friends who love me so much (and can't, i hope, resist shameless comment-whoring) is the question: can it be done (meaning: can i do it?) and more important (because in all my egotism i am certain that i can do it; i just don't belive my ego when he says so) more important, do you have any suggestions, any ideas jump out that you don't mind putting on loan, any changes to what i see it as (number of characters, point of view; preferably including reason for suggestion..) thank you eternally for even reading this far, and moreso if you offer any assistance at all. namaste.
this is somehow ineffably sweet, though it may not seem so. it is, i suppose, the sort of thing that any lass would love to hear, perhaps even a lad would like to hear. a guy in the bookstore said is turns the girl it's written for into nothing but a sex object, but i don't think that's so. it's lovely, that's all.
and now, the complete mouse story, with translation below. forgive the lack of paragraph breaks. suggestions, comments, and corrections are welcome. enjoy. ( Collapse )
tired