In which I ramble...
He spoke very well about the decency and comradeship natural to animals. ‘Animals don’t behave like men,’ he said. ‘If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don’t sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures’ lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.’
Rabbits have been one of my only obsessions in life. My first three science fair projects were on rabbits, little shoebox dioramas with clay bunnies inside. My dad started reading me Watership Down* when I was five, got to chapter 17 and then we were disrupted because of the move. Finally read it fully for a book report in sixth grade, and have re-read it countless times since, including once in the past few days. Two rabbits have been my only pets, and I wouldn’t really want any others...Blackberry, the first, inspired a story about family dynamics when he died suddenly; Misty is still around, though she lives with a family around the corner since I moved out. The wild rabbits around Wash U are messengers to me; they calm me when I see them in the shadows; I like to sit and watch them for inordinately long periods of time.
Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence...into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life...another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all the former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one...it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.
I was guided by this sense of composition, perhaps, to Dancing Rabbit, and that’s part of why it’s stuck in my mind so frequently. I don’t know what lead me not to spend that summer there, to not even apply. It was only a misunderstanding that led me not to go with the Quinn group when they visited. I think that’s why it was so tender when Betsy came back so enthralled, and went to live there, loving it - in some ways I wanted it to be my place, and not hers. And at that point something that was hers could not be mine, by definition. It took me awhile to feel my own connection to it again, just as it took time to re-learn interaction on my own terms. Partly because of the way it fits in with my life’s motifs, I still toy with the idea of going and setting up shop there. I don’t know what I’d do for a living, but it could be a place, and a safe one.
[He] came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not 'Es muss sein!' (It must be so), but rather 'Es könnte auch anders sein' (It could just as well be otherwise).
I know that in my life right now I seek stability. I’m not sure if the source matters: stability of place, person, or pursuit would all satisfy the longing. I’m not sure I should force that stability just yet, though - I sense that there are more lessons to learn in the adrift, wandering state. I question: how will I know? I guess that’s the part about composition…eventually enough of the pieces fit, and you do know. Or not. Or you make your choices based on the composition as it exists at the time, and see where the next note takes you...
I’m not even sure stability of the kind I seek really exists. I realized recently that the reason behind my own desire for a long-term relationship (with a person, place, or pursuit) is, sometimes at least, a desire to be limited. I want to be reigned in, the possibilities harnessed so I can concentrate, focus. The problem with this line of desire is not the desire to focus; it is in the reliance on the other to limit my own choices, when in reality that is a power only I (and time) should control. It may be that I never know what is right to do, that the pieces never fit as they should. This imperfection is beautiful too. It may also be that I find my stability; then I must work to remember to be flexible still, and leave when it is time.
Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love…Necessity knows no magic formulae -- they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.
Talking to Betsy the other day, it sounded like she was looking for the right place more than the right person, or rather, the right place and then, perhaps, the right person(s). I think this approach is a sound one, in many ways, but also helps explain the string of disappointed or broken-hearted people she tends to leave in her wake. Those of us attached more strongly to traditional relationship models (long-term, monogamous) I think like to view our relationships as a destined, a product of fate. It is disconcerting, therefore, to find someone willing to say, “I love you, yes: but you don’t fit into my composition well enough as it is.” And the fact remains that you could be the one, but so could their next lover, or no one, and you are not. There’s a strong temptation, then, to respond by changing your own tune, beyond recognition even, to join with theirs. That won’t work, that giving of choice and control to someone else, and Betsy, for one, knows it. In our culture it’s seen as devotion, but loss of self, even if it’s voluntary, isn’t healthy for anyone.
Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other.
If I were strong in myself (and I am becoming strong this way), I would seek depth of knowledge that is acquired over time rather than a false stability. It takes time, effort to understand and speak the same language as another person, to learn the tongue of a place, to immerse yourself enough in a discipline that you can see and use its connections to the world. Even so, after talking with Faye I understand that the choice of which person, which place, which pursuit - while not, perhaps, immutably fated and destined - is, nonetheless, important; and can only be made by listening closely to your own heart. What do I desire?
Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup...
*side note to those not in the know: Watership Down is a great book, and it’s about rabbits. Read it! The first quote is from WD, the rest are from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (also wonderful).
Rabbits have been one of my only obsessions in life. My first three science fair projects were on rabbits, little shoebox dioramas with clay bunnies inside. My dad started reading me Watership Down* when I was five, got to chapter 17 and then we were disrupted because of the move. Finally read it fully for a book report in sixth grade, and have re-read it countless times since, including once in the past few days. Two rabbits have been my only pets, and I wouldn’t really want any others...Blackberry, the first, inspired a story about family dynamics when he died suddenly; Misty is still around, though she lives with a family around the corner since I moved out. The wild rabbits around Wash U are messengers to me; they calm me when I see them in the shadows; I like to sit and watch them for inordinately long periods of time.
Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence...into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life...another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all the former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one...it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.
I was guided by this sense of composition, perhaps, to Dancing Rabbit, and that’s part of why it’s stuck in my mind so frequently. I don’t know what lead me not to spend that summer there, to not even apply. It was only a misunderstanding that led me not to go with the Quinn group when they visited. I think that’s why it was so tender when Betsy came back so enthralled, and went to live there, loving it - in some ways I wanted it to be my place, and not hers. And at that point something that was hers could not be mine, by definition. It took me awhile to feel my own connection to it again, just as it took time to re-learn interaction on my own terms. Partly because of the way it fits in with my life’s motifs, I still toy with the idea of going and setting up shop there. I don’t know what I’d do for a living, but it could be a place, and a safe one.
[He] came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not 'Es muss sein!' (It must be so), but rather 'Es könnte auch anders sein' (It could just as well be otherwise).
I know that in my life right now I seek stability. I’m not sure if the source matters: stability of place, person, or pursuit would all satisfy the longing. I’m not sure I should force that stability just yet, though - I sense that there are more lessons to learn in the adrift, wandering state. I question: how will I know? I guess that’s the part about composition…eventually enough of the pieces fit, and you do know. Or not. Or you make your choices based on the composition as it exists at the time, and see where the next note takes you...
I’m not even sure stability of the kind I seek really exists. I realized recently that the reason behind my own desire for a long-term relationship (with a person, place, or pursuit) is, sometimes at least, a desire to be limited. I want to be reigned in, the possibilities harnessed so I can concentrate, focus. The problem with this line of desire is not the desire to focus; it is in the reliance on the other to limit my own choices, when in reality that is a power only I (and time) should control. It may be that I never know what is right to do, that the pieces never fit as they should. This imperfection is beautiful too. It may also be that I find my stability; then I must work to remember to be flexible still, and leave when it is time.
Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love…Necessity knows no magic formulae -- they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.
Talking to Betsy the other day, it sounded like she was looking for the right place more than the right person, or rather, the right place and then, perhaps, the right person(s). I think this approach is a sound one, in many ways, but also helps explain the string of disappointed or broken-hearted people she tends to leave in her wake. Those of us attached more strongly to traditional relationship models (long-term, monogamous) I think like to view our relationships as a destined, a product of fate. It is disconcerting, therefore, to find someone willing to say, “I love you, yes: but you don’t fit into my composition well enough as it is.” And the fact remains that you could be the one, but so could their next lover, or no one, and you are not. There’s a strong temptation, then, to respond by changing your own tune, beyond recognition even, to join with theirs. That won’t work, that giving of choice and control to someone else, and Betsy, for one, knows it. In our culture it’s seen as devotion, but loss of self, even if it’s voluntary, isn’t healthy for anyone.
Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other.
If I were strong in myself (and I am becoming strong this way), I would seek depth of knowledge that is acquired over time rather than a false stability. It takes time, effort to understand and speak the same language as another person, to learn the tongue of a place, to immerse yourself enough in a discipline that you can see and use its connections to the world. Even so, after talking with Faye I understand that the choice of which person, which place, which pursuit - while not, perhaps, immutably fated and destined - is, nonetheless, important; and can only be made by listening closely to your own heart. What do I desire?
Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup...
*side note to those not in the know: Watership Down is a great book, and it’s about rabbits. Read it! The first quote is from WD, the rest are from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (also wonderful).