Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Turn me into a savage...

He is the sum total of everything that went before him, of all he has seen done, of everything done-to-him. He is everyone and everything whose being-in-the-world was affected by his. He is anything that happens after he is gone, which would not have happened if he had not come.


Memory is truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own. So go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things - childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves - that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.