What a cliff-hanger! It has a flavor of Borges or Cortazar for me. The partial stories you find in your papers reminded me of something I read in a New York Times Magazine article about the Spanish director Almodóvar that stuck with me: "Almodóvar often lets his stories sit for years before turning them into movies. His computer contains dozens of embryonic scripts..."
I'm glad you liked it, Melanie. That's a fascinating tidbit about Almodovar. Love it. And it does play into soft speculations I've occasionally had about potential prospects for all these old fragments and ideas.
I wonder if a twist in the narrative - a surprising opposition to the readers anticipation might open a participatory response ? Here's what brings me to this question.
I visited two nights ago with a close friend - "Franklin". He and his wife of 60-odd years have travelled extensively and lived abroad for much of their married life. He was an engineer by trade and opened a school of engineering in Africa. He's a quiet guy for the most part, any of his personal stories and history I've only come to know after several years - he doesn't like to talk about himself. He attends gatherings of Quakers here in Wolfville, and devotes much of his time to peace activism.
One of his anecdotes and our ensuing chat around it was an event which took place in Norway when he was 23 years old. He sleep-walked off the 4th floor of a hotel balcony, and spent the better part of a year recovering in hospital. His survival was nothing short of miraculous. Also of note - several days before that, he had written in his journal - "I feel I'm nearing the end of my life". At that time He made a plea to his God that if he could survive, he would devote himself to his spiritual life.
Frank's reading choices are mostly around the subject of Christian mysticism, and he asked me if I was familiar with - "The Cloud of Unknowing"....which I am.
Today, he feels that all study and reading of philosophy must follow AFTER a direct and personal experience of a Divine or Cosmic nature - that philosophy and religion cannot generate a direct experience....they are rather the after-effects of such - like a record or a journal entry.
Love this. Thank you for sharing it, Richard. Your friend's perspective resonates with the way I've come to see things myself -- though his dramatic four-story fall isn't something I've experienced! Reading and studying philosophy and spirituality on the front end, so to speak, can provide information, and it can help to shape one's thinking, and it may even provide pointers about where and how to look in one's own experience. But its deeper function is as confirmation, clarification, and articulation of what one has actually and already seen for oneself. In that way, the reading of it is on a wavelength with the writing of it, with the inner vision out of which it was written.
And I think I get what you're suggesting about how this theme could play out in a further development of the story fragment. It would indeed be effective.
I wrote you in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep. Later, I had an awful feeling that my comment sounded lofty and pretentious ! I always look forward to your posts, and find them relevant in an eerily way to whatever I’m dealing with in my own world. Thank you, Matt !
I feel like I could have been at a desk in this store and participated in some of the conversations about that book. That’s pretty fun.
You may well have inhabited that space with me and the fragment's narrator...
What a cliff-hanger! It has a flavor of Borges or Cortazar for me. The partial stories you find in your papers reminded me of something I read in a New York Times Magazine article about the Spanish director Almodóvar that stuck with me: "Almodóvar often lets his stories sit for years before turning them into movies. His computer contains dozens of embryonic scripts..."
I'm glad you liked it, Melanie. That's a fascinating tidbit about Almodovar. Love it. And it does play into soft speculations I've occasionally had about potential prospects for all these old fragments and ideas.
I wonder if a twist in the narrative - a surprising opposition to the readers anticipation might open a participatory response ? Here's what brings me to this question.
I visited two nights ago with a close friend - "Franklin". He and his wife of 60-odd years have travelled extensively and lived abroad for much of their married life. He was an engineer by trade and opened a school of engineering in Africa. He's a quiet guy for the most part, any of his personal stories and history I've only come to know after several years - he doesn't like to talk about himself. He attends gatherings of Quakers here in Wolfville, and devotes much of his time to peace activism.
One of his anecdotes and our ensuing chat around it was an event which took place in Norway when he was 23 years old. He sleep-walked off the 4th floor of a hotel balcony, and spent the better part of a year recovering in hospital. His survival was nothing short of miraculous. Also of note - several days before that, he had written in his journal - "I feel I'm nearing the end of my life". At that time He made a plea to his God that if he could survive, he would devote himself to his spiritual life.
Frank's reading choices are mostly around the subject of Christian mysticism, and he asked me if I was familiar with - "The Cloud of Unknowing"....which I am.
Today, he feels that all study and reading of philosophy must follow AFTER a direct and personal experience of a Divine or Cosmic nature - that philosophy and religion cannot generate a direct experience....they are rather the after-effects of such - like a record or a journal entry.
Love this. Thank you for sharing it, Richard. Your friend's perspective resonates with the way I've come to see things myself -- though his dramatic four-story fall isn't something I've experienced! Reading and studying philosophy and spirituality on the front end, so to speak, can provide information, and it can help to shape one's thinking, and it may even provide pointers about where and how to look in one's own experience. But its deeper function is as confirmation, clarification, and articulation of what one has actually and already seen for oneself. In that way, the reading of it is on a wavelength with the writing of it, with the inner vision out of which it was written.
And I think I get what you're suggesting about how this theme could play out in a further development of the story fragment. It would indeed be effective.
I wrote you in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep. Later, I had an awful feeling that my comment sounded lofty and pretentious ! I always look forward to your posts, and find them relevant in an eerily way to whatever I’m dealing with in my own world. Thank you, Matt !
Thank you, Richard!