Narrative
Why do I write in the first person? Because the I may sometimes be a lie - it may even always be a lie. But at least it has the potential not to be a lie, whereas anything else is always and automatically a lie.
Narrative
Why do I write in the first person? Because the I may sometimes be a lie - it may even always be a lie. But at least it has the potential not to be a lie, whereas anything else is always and automatically a lie.
Spending one's life
You would need to spend your life reading my life for my life to be complete. But you cannot spend your life reading my life, since I need to be here to write it -- I need to be here to prevent myself from being anywhere else, to be here in order to commemorate the things that weren't here - namely, you.
My Name
As a child, I used to be chastised for the way I pronounced my name. True, I pronounced it the same way as almost everyone else, but this did not mean that what I pronounced was correct. Instead, my father said something different, though I could never exactly define the difference, and even as I struggled to repeat it aloud and make familiar to myself everything that was unfamiliar about it, it always seemed that he was just in a bad temper, and there was nothing left to cling onto. Now, with a start, I realise that he is dead and there is no one now who knows how to pronounce my name. I wear it; I lay some claim to it; but I don’t really possess it, since I don’t really understand it. And then I wonder: if even my own name is so hard for me to come by, how am I even to begin to search for truth in this haphazard world of ours?
The Guardian
She sits atop a pillar, a gatepost of some kind, knees clasped, fractionally older than the children beneath her. But even as she watches over them, she is thinking of something else - that something about her is different and unique. And perhaps she looks so pensive only because she already knows that she will not do anything about it, and nothing special will ever happen to her.
Mad Welsh Devilman
When I was a student, particularly toward winter, we used to visit Mad Welsh Devilman; no one knew him by any other name, and he invariably answered to it and its logical abbreviations as if nothing were amiss. All the same, he must have foregone his pedigree somewhere, for something about him made it clear to you he was not like a person with a real name.
Self expression
- It isn't as if you ever really felt anything ..., he continued.
- No, I responded instinctively, since no one has ever understood me and therefore anything they hazard about me must be wrong; - and then, since the immediate threat seemed to have passed - Yes.
But I didn't know, and now I felt bitter for not knowing, while all around me, I was dizzyingly aware, everyone else was knowing everything. You go from one extreme to the other, I mentally rehearsed, yet does this mean that neither extreme can be true, and, if so or if not, for they are entirely the same even if they are different, then what? Which part of this reasoning cannot be grasped by all of us together? Why is some part always amiss? Can you help me without grinding leather between my teeth?
Pensive
- You look pensive, he says.
- Yes, I concede. I'm a little subdued, I suppose: But you must know that I have no reason to be so. It isn't reasonable for me to feel the way I do, and so I'm a little embarrassed for it.
- But I wasn't asking you to be reasonable, he said. Why should you have to be reasonable?
- Well, but then, I mean to say, there's no excuse for it, really. It isn't as if there's any real excuse, anyway.
- But why should you need an excuse to feel sad?
- Well, yes, I said, wondering why I was fighting all this, wondering what I was actually defending beyond my private right to feel the way I did, whether I knew why or not. Seeming to sense my awkwardness, he interjected:
- You don't have to tell me the truth, you know. I don't mind lies. I don't mind anything at all. I don't think anything special about you, and so nothing you say will really surprise me. You can be yourself, or someone else; it's all the same.
- But it isn't the same, I said, because we live in a world in which it's possible for these things to be the same. And that itself is the reason that they should never be the same; that itself is the reason that they deserve to be separate and different, that itself is the reason they deserve to be themselves. Reality is in perpetual threat of losing its grip on us, casting us aside, giving us over as a bad lot; if we're indifferent to the truth, where will it go? What will it leave us with, then? How could we get back to the place where words were true to us again?
