Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(culled from The Book of Shadows, The Blind Eye and Best Though
Worst Thought)
Falling and flying are near-identical sensations, in all but one
final detail. We should remember this when we see those men
and women seemingly in love with their own decline.
Suddenly there was nothing I could do to impress her. All the
brilliant discursion, the sublime compliments, the poems and
songs I laid at her feet . . . I began to fear the worst: that if I was
loved at all I was loved for myself.
In my adult life, the time I have actually lived inside the
present moment would amount to no more than a single day. If
only I could have lived it as a single day; it would have thrown
its light into all the others, like a brazier in a dark arcade.
Instead I find my way by sparks, and what they briefly made
visible.
Terrible description in the newspaper today of a woman
watching her child fall, fatally, from a high chute. It was if
everything went into slow motion . . . No - time had not slowed;
she had hesitated. The real horror is that our human instinct is
to watch first and act second. Can you imagine a lioness in
such a paralysis of spectatorship?
No fury more righteous than that of a sinner accused of the
wrong sin.