"Contemplation is the essence of story-telling," I say.
"I could listen to your stories all day," he says, "but it is your contemplations that I love."
How would I someday explain the contemplations that have led to this state of mind? It is hardly a spiritual eat pray love journey. But if you only knew how far I have evolved, inside. It is a thing of wonder. A shape-shifting metallic creature.
Sometimes I write my own stories. Sometimes I write other people's stories. In most of the books I've read, there are always two characters. No, no, not the protagonist and antagonist, nothing that bleak. There is always the person who is content to live in a default comfortable cave, and there is always the person who feels there is an ocean out there. Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. All the Buendias in 100 Years of Solitude. They all rattled the bars of their cages like any normal living breathing intuitive beast would. As for those who have accepted their fate without a struggle, I do not know what to say of them. Are they sub-human? Are they half-dead? Or are they just peaceful? Or are they just coping?
I could write stories about the cave-people. With the polite interest of an observer who finds them anthropologically interesting. But socially numbing. Their allure lies in the very fact that their accepted realities are swallowed whole, peppered with either a smile or a petty complaint. And my evolution centers around the notion that I used to consider that normal. Alienatingly normal.
"I could listen to your stories all day," he says, "but it is your contemplations that I love."
How would I someday explain the contemplations that have led to this state of mind? It is hardly a spiritual eat pray love journey. But if you only knew how far I have evolved, inside. It is a thing of wonder. A shape-shifting metallic creature.
Sometimes I write my own stories. Sometimes I write other people's stories. In most of the books I've read, there are always two characters. No, no, not the protagonist and antagonist, nothing that bleak. There is always the person who is content to live in a default comfortable cave, and there is always the person who feels there is an ocean out there. Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. All the Buendias in 100 Years of Solitude. They all rattled the bars of their cages like any normal living breathing intuitive beast would. As for those who have accepted their fate without a struggle, I do not know what to say of them. Are they sub-human? Are they half-dead? Or are they just peaceful? Or are they just coping?
I could write stories about the cave-people. With the polite interest of an observer who finds them anthropologically interesting. But socially numbing. Their allure lies in the very fact that their accepted realities are swallowed whole, peppered with either a smile or a petty complaint. And my evolution centers around the notion that I used to consider that normal. Alienatingly normal.
