Modern-day confessional
We're here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming for ourselves the rights of the universe. Being important, being nothing, being caught in lives of our own making that we never wanted. Breaking out, trying again, wondering why the past comes with us, wondering how to talk about the past at all.
So I finished Lighthousekeeping. I still haven't decided if it's as good as Sexing the Cherry, but all that means is that it's just excellent if not stellar. The thing about Winterson's novels is that they always offer me new perspectives on interpretation. How to see and feel things, how to intuit them. It's like finding a dusty old chest in the attic that belonged to some forgotten ancestor, and opening it to find the treasures of another age like artifacts. You take each succeeding object out, touch it, turn it around, and in that instant you discover entire land masses of yourself you never knew existed. Atlantis risen from the deep, or an America where an India ought to be. It causes me to ask myself, "Where are my stories? My beginnings, my middles, my ends?" Because that's always what it boils down to. Stories.
Today has been a day of rest. I had my class this morning, came home and puttered around on the computer, and then finished my book. I really should get to reading my brand spanking new textbook (I've skimmed the salient parts, but I'm going to need to do more if I want to stand on firm ground), but as there's no way I'm getting out of my morning shift tomorrow I don't feel it as a particularly pressing need.
We watched The Hills Have Eyes last night. The scariest part was the opening credits scene. I was disappointed because they turned what could have been a great thriller into something resembling every other horror movie out there (only more graphic and gory). See, if instead of showing how these kids manage to overcome the crazed, bloodthirsty mutants and survive the psychologically scarring violence that kills their parents and sibling, they'd have told the story from Ruby's POV, it would have been so much better. I'd have liked to understand how growing up in such a dysfunctional (to put it mildly) environment could have motivated her to protect the stolen baby and the other intended victims to the point of sacrificing her own life. I'd have liked to get to know them as people, rather than be shown in no uncertain terms that they're all just monsters, and as such they don't need a reason to do monstrous things, and also that it's okay to slaughter them. (maybe that last is a bit unfair, but still. Any attempts at earning the empathy of viewers for the mutants were paltry at best-- what little of it there is, again, happens to be in the opening credits.)
There's a booth in Grand Central Station where you can go and record your life. You talk. It tapes. It's the modern-day confessional-- no priest, just your voice in the silence. What you were, digitally saved for the future.
Forty minutes is yours.
My question is, that 40 minutes of digital recording playing back your voice, how much of you would that be? Would it be a snapshot of your thoughts for that instant in time? A fragment of you? Would it be representative? ...I find the idea of a part of me that goes on existing independentally, frozen as if in a vacuum, as digital information, utterly disturbing and at the same time immensely comforting. After all, isn't that more or less what I'm doing right now?