You are a fool, I thought to myself. You have been reading too much and your mind is wound too tightly. You have been drowning in memory.
“But without ego,” Diego said, “your writing is just scribbles in a journal. Your art is just doodles. Ego demands that what you do is important enough that you be given money to work on it.” He gestured to the hotel around us. “It demands that what you say is important enough that it be published or shown to the world.”
It were as if I were a minor character in someone else’s play, and the plot required me to stay there at that moment, no matter how I resisted. Perhaps that is what caused my grief.
“Twist me, and turn me, and show me the elf,” she finished. “I looked in the water and saw—”
She stopped, and I remembered.
“Myself,” I whispered.
She stopped, and I remembered.
“Myself,” I whispered.
I turned and ran for the trees.
In the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. What if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? What if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it’s all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? What if you get inside and there’s no furniture? What if you get inside and it’s just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket of your lap and humming a little tune? What if you get inside and there’s nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?
What is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?
What is worse: writing a trope or being one? What about being more than one?
In the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. What if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? What if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it’s all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? What if you get inside and there’s no furniture? What if you get inside and it’s just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket of your lap and humming a little tune? What if you get inside and there’s nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?
What is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?
What is worse: writing a trope or being one? What about being more than one?
It’s like you’re not even in there. He grabs the sides of his arms. You’re responding to all of the wrong things.
took a step toward her. “It is my right to reside in my own mind. It is my right,” I said. “It is my right to be unsociable and it is my right to be unpleasant to be around. Do you ever listen to yourself? This is crazy, that is crazy, everything is crazy to you. By whose measure? Well, it is my right to be crazy, as you love to say so much. I have no shame. I have felt many things in my life, but shame is not among them.” The volume of my voice caused me to stand on my tiptoes. I could not remember yelling like this, ever. “You may think that I have an obligation to you but I assure you that us being thrown together in this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never had less of an obligation to anyone in my life, you aggressively ordinary woman.”
Lydia began to cry.
Lydia began to cry.
Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.
“What kind of question is that?”
“A curious one. But I guess all questions are curious.”
“A curious one. But I guess all questions are curious.”
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” S