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🦋 Written for him alone
Of the thousand experiences we have, we find language for one at most and even this one merely by chance and without the care it deserves. Buried under all the mute experiences are those unseen ones that give our life its form, its color, its melody. Then, when we turn to these treasures, as archæologists of the soul, we discover how confusing they are. The object of contemplation refuses to stand still, the words bounce off the experience and in the end, pure contradictions stand on the paper. For a long time, I thought it was a defect, something to be overcome. Today I think it is different: that recognition of the confusion is the ideal path to understanding these intimate yet enigmatic experiences. That sounds strange, even bizarre, I know. But ever since I have seen the issue in this light, I have the feeling of being really awake and alive for the first time."That's the introduction," said the bookdealer and started leafing through it. "And now he seems to begin, passage after passage, to dig for all the buried experiences. To be the archæologist of himself. Some passages are several pages long and others are quite short. Here, for example, is a fragment that consists of only one sentence." He translated: Given that we live only a small part of what there is in us -- what happens with the rest?
Aha! No wonder Night Train to Lisbon has been seeming familiar in structure to me -- it is built on a similar foundation to The White Castle. It is going to be way less cryptic though, a third-person narration and we have access to the Book that Gregorius is reading. (I wonder how it is going to work out, for Gregorius not to understand Portuguese?)* This is going to be fun...
 * Ah: he is buying a Portuguese textbook.
posted evening of Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
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