Monthly Archives: January 2009

Us and them

Posted on January 22, 2009 | Leave a comment

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.

– Montaigne

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Posted in Montaigne

Fire

Posted on January 21, 2009 | Leave a comment

It is the same as when the fire wants to draw the wood into itself and, again, itself into the wood; then it finds first that the wood is unlike itself. Hence it needs time. First it makes the wood warm and hot, and then the latter smokes and cracks because it is unlike the fire. Now the hotter the wood grows the quieter and calmer it becomes, and the more like the fire it is, the more peaceful it is, until it is itself wholly fire.

– Master Eckhart

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Posted in Master Eckhart

Gargoyles

Posted on January 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

Then I realised there was no trial, he said. I’d turned the judges and jailors and all the mythical nightmare-creatures I’d arranged around me into stone. Now they sit here like gargoyles on a cathedral, protecting me.

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Posted in Writing

How else would we be growing?

Posted on January 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

‘At first’ writes Pursewarden ‘we seek to supplement the emptiness of our individuality through love, and for a brief moment enjoy the illusion of completeness. But it is only an illusion. For this strange creature, which we thought would join us to the body of the world, succeeds at last in separating us most thoroughly from it. Love joins and then divides. How else would we be growing?’
   How else indeed? But relieved to find myself once more partnerless I have already groped my way back to my dark corner where the empty chairs of the revellers stand like barren ears of corn.

– Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet

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Posted in Lawrence Durrell

Trust

Posted on January 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

I don’t blame them for not trusting me, he said. Neither do I, I said. I wouldn’t trust myself either, he said, in fact I don’t. Neither do I, I said. It would be stupid, he said. Stupid, I said. He glared at me.

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Posted in Writing

Cheating

Posted on January 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

I cheated them, he said, I cheated them all. No you didn’t, I said. What do you mean, he said. We all saw you, all the time, I said. Hiding your head in the sand.

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Posted in Writing

Rebellion

Posted on January 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

I couldn’t go through with it, he said. And I couldn’t do what I chose to replace it with either. You seek out things you know you’ll have to rebel against, I said. If you know so much what should I seek out? he said. Don’t seek, I said, rebel against yourself. That’s what I thought I was doing, he said. So I should rebel against my own rebellion? Only if you know what you’re rebelling against, I said. What do you know, he said.

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Posted in Writing

Intimations

Posted on January 18, 2009 | 1 Comment

‘You see, Justine, I believe that Gods are men and men Gods; they intrude on each other’s lives, trying to express themselves through each other — hence such apparent confusion in our human states of mind, our intimations of powers within or beyond us … And then (listen) I think that very few people realize that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth — a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach. That is why all your dull repetitions of the same mistake are simply like a boring great multiplication table, and will remain so until you get your head out of the paper bag and start to think responsibly.’

– Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet

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Posted in Lawrence Durrell

What was I after all?

Posted on January 18, 2009 | Leave a comment

What was I after all? Near enough what Conchis had had me told: nothing but the net sum of countless wrong turnings. I dismissed most of the Freudian jargon of the trial; but all my life I had tried to turn life into fiction, to hold reality away; always I had acted as if a third person was watching and listening and giving me marks for good or bad behaviour — a god like a novelist, to whom I turned, like a character with the power to please, the sensitivity to feel slighted, the ability to adapt himself to whatever he believed the novelist-god wanted. This leech-like variation of the super-ego I had created myself, fostered myself, and because of it I had always been incapable of acting freely. It was not my defence; but my despot. And now I saw it, I saw it a death too late.

– John Fowles, The Magus

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Posted in John Fowles

Just one won’t hurt

Posted on January 18, 2009 | Leave a comment

It’s a terrible cliché, I know, but sometimes you have to hit bottom before you can stand back up, he said. It doesn’t matter, I said. They’d call it Romantic, he said, they’d call it kitsch. It doesn’t matter, I said. He talked about the dangers of caveats. ‘Just one won’t hurt. You deserve it.’ Another cliché, he said. Stop that, I said, you’ll start the whole thing rolling again. What do you know, he said.

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Posted in Writing