End-of-day reminder
Fourteen stories up, sitting cross-legged on the neighboring tower's concrete deck, thin and without chairs but shady, Blackberry nearby but resting, holding Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium, spending a needed hour slow-reading the first essay, "Lightness."
When I began my career, the categorical imperative of every young writer was to represent his own time. Full of good intentions, I tried to identify myself with the ruthless energies propelling the events of our century, both collective and individual. I tried to find some harmony between the adventurous, picaresque inner rhythm that prompted me to write and the frantic spectacle of the world, sometimes dramatic and sometimes grotesque. Soon I became aware that between the facts of life that should have been my raw materials and the quick light touch I wanted for my writing, there was a gulf that cost me increasing effort to cross. Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world"“qualities that stick to writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.
At certain moments I felt that the entire world was turning into stone: a slow petrification, more or less advanced depending on people and places but one that spared no aspect of life. It was as if no one could escape the inexorable stare of Medusa. The only hero able to cut off Medusa's head is Perseus, who flies with winged sandals; Perseus, who does not turn his gaze upon the face of the Gorgon but only upon her image reflected in his bronze shield. Thus Perseus comes to my aid even at this moment, just as I too am about to be caught in a vise of stone"“which happens every time I try to speak about my own past. Better to let my talk be composed of images from mythology.
June 1st, 2010 at 8:33 AM
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