Early
one morning words were missing. Before that, words were not. Facts were, faces
were. In a good story, Aristotle tells us, everything that happens is pushed by
something else. Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to
question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything
there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue-green shoots and the plant
called "audacity," which poets mistake for violets. I began to
copy out everything that was said. The marks construct an instant of nature
gradually, without the boredom of a story. I emphasize this. I will do anything
to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough,
never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough,
never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.
Boredom is the penitentiary of reason.
ReplyDeleteI read this to the tune of Tangled Up in Blue and it was incredible
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that!
ReplyDelete