(no subject)

The mind, the attention, the day can be filled with most anything. We're a hole that can't abide being one but that will take anything as filling, in a pinch. This is the basic conversion of tragedy to comedy--the ridiculous things we stuff in there. But these too dissolve, and the emptiness is back. So you come to look for what will reliably refill you, what will stay in you longest, what might (should such things exist) be incorporated into the edges forever, make more more and less less. What fills for everything forever without any kind of juggling or revision is a dream most of us give up on early. But there are things that give even when we don't recognize just what--our expectation is wrong, but right to have. There are sources worth digging for.

We're a hole, but is a hole the empty part or a feature in the surrounding fullness? Are we earth expanding or air contracting? We're the earth, I think, but as the hole is our one task we identify overmuch with the air. People so easily forget how much it is to have however many hands and toes, thoughts and smells when the next person is taller or some specific additive dream comes to nothing or the rent's due.

Stare too long into the abyss and you'll forget what's on the other side of your eyes. And perhaps that's true for either direction.

(no subject)

Two Stoppard versions of Chekhov plays are being published in January. I found his Seagull a bit disappointing--Stoppard reflexively goes for a deadpan sort of dialogue, where you're supposed to know his characters are actors. It's very good for comedy, implying everything is safe (that even apparently unsafe things are demonstrations, hence safe), a way of polishing outrageous things into acceptability. Very, very good for comedy, not so good for The Seagull, where a quiet surface is broken by expressions of frustration that further frustrate those expressing them. Another kind of dialogue of safety, maybe, but if so one safe because all possible harm has already been done by the world outside of words.