Hypnopompicture 8

Summer anger / anger summer

Colours cut like shadows

The dark sharp blade of shadows

I wake up on a perfectly normal day.

I get ready for work. I walk out of the house to the train station. My head starts listing down what needs to be done, who needs to be called, which paperwork needs scribbling and sending, which problems need addressing and among all this, what I can reasonably expect to do on the day. I start choosing - tasks, ideas, budget, products, colours, materials, providers.

Suddenly life overwhelms me - stronger than me, it uses me as a tool. The me that says I is seized by this feeling : there are fewer and fewer chinks in my life. I am living inside them.

And literature comes to the rescue. How many times has it done that now ? Again this morning : in an essay published in 1954, Jean-Pierre Richard dissects Flaubert's mind through his writing:

"Et s’il est en effet un choix de Flaubert, c’est le choix de ne pas choisir, ou, plus négativement encore, le refus de la vie dans la mesure où elle oblige à se choisir. Mais ce refus engage Flaubert dans une très authentique expérience de la liberté ; l’être y vit dans l’impossibilité de jamais adhérer à lui-même. Pouvant être tout, il n’est rien. « Pas plus là-dessus que sur la question principale je n’ai d’opinion à moi » écrit-il lorsqu’on lui propose de publier des extraits de Saint Antoine. « Je ne sais que penser, je suis comme l’âne de Buridan… Voilà que, dans la question la plus importante peut-être d’une vie d’artiste…, je m’annule, je me fonds, et sans efforts hélas ! car je fais tout ce que je peux pour avoir un avis quelconque –et j’en suis dénué autant que possible… Je me déciderais à pile ou face et je n’aurais pas de regret du choix quel qu’il fût » (Flaubert, Correspondance, II, p : 320)  (1)"

"And if indeed there is a choice from Flaubert, it is the choice of not choosing, or, even more negatively, the refusal of life in the sense that life forces us to choose. But this refusal involves Flaubert in a very authentic experience of freedom; the being living in it cannot possibly ever adhere to himself. Because he can be everything, he is nothing. “On this as well as on the main question, I have no personal opinion” Flaubert writes when offered to publish extracts of The Temptation of St Antoine. “I know not what to think, I am like Buridan’s ass... Suddenly, in what may be the most important question in the life of an artist..., I offset myself, I melt, and effortlessly alas ! for I do whatever I can to have an opinion, any opinion –and I am as opinionless as it is possible to be... I would flip a coin to decide and I would have no regret about the choice, whichever it might be.” "  (1)

Dilution is a feeling. It is a state of the being. It is a problem. I create and tell stories in an attempt to make sense of my own life. But who needs it ? There is no need for sense in order to survive. There is no need for consistency. There is no need for choice. There is only the need for food.

So then, what should I have for lunch ?

============

(1) Jean-Pierre Richard, Littérature et Sensation, Seuil, 1954, p : 193 (my translation)