Uncategorised Submission.
to believe that the world
can be summarised
is always tempting. even more
of a temptation — is the hope
that that summary would be
composed primarily of darkness.
I don’t know why I started entering the lines like a poem and ignoring capitalisation. The temptation to make all words soft and lower, and then capitalise the Very Important ones to signify that They are Very Important is admittedly somewhat of a factor. Anyways, this wasn’t (isn’t) [will not be] a poem.
I don’t know what it is; my paragraphs are small and awkward. I only know, that it is not a poem.
My only homework today, other than Middlemarch, is to write a poem.
It would be nice, if the world really were an uncomplicated ominous sprawl — a darkness greater than understanding, but beautiful in its all-consuming glory.
Donna Tartt had her character Henry say that “beauty is terror,” and that, “whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it”.
It’s a nice thought: quite beautiful.
She has a lot of her characters saying things like that. I think she actually believes them. They’re all true for her work ; it’s dark and cruel and full of the inherently terrible, but it remains heart-numbingly beautiful until the end.
I want that to be our world: the light completely gone, the voice of a far-away soprano spiraling on and on in the darkness like some angel of death, the air high and cold and rarefied.
I want every sentence of my life to read like a masterpiece, but to be dark with rich nuances.
… but our world is not so dark, not so simple — and when it is dark, it’s not dark like that.
One of the most common sights at a used book sale is We Were the Mulvaneys. You should buy it. You can buy my copy. I never want to read it again.
It doesn’t have such significance to its phrasing as Tartt always builds, but as a whole, it is equally compelling, if not moreso.
It’s ugly.
I don’t say that as an insult. The book is composed of horrible things and it is wonderfully written .
but still it is heartbreaking. still it is ugly.
I don’t think it’s possible to read without vomiting. Nor, do I believe it can be put down halfway thorough. (12/10, I highly recommend. You’ll hate me for it.)
so the world’s not a single poetic darkness…
and when it is dark, it’s not beautiful.
Doesn’t this negate the possibility that we can be something extraordinary through our ordinary softness — that we can prick the dark mass with shining white light, until it pulses and radiates with a dull glow?
like damn it Gandalf; you’ve got none of this right!
The world is not unified to an extent that small acts can be important sorely because they are different. They’re not even different, or original, or important. Nothing is, after all.
They just exist.
I just exist.
That’s enough.
The world is complex and spiraling and the only constant is lack of generality. We are dark and light, sure, but every shade of gray — and no one mentioned how white can be suffocating and ominous and cold, while black is a still warmth, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant.
No one action is more important than any other. It may be light or the dark. It may be black or white. It may be motivated instead, by nothing at all.
but regardless, always, it is insignificant.
That doesn’t change the fact that it’s yours, but it lessens the drama a bit. Gandalf always was too much of a drama queen.
