Discrete
She once thought that it should take a long time to write. When ideas came, she analyzed them out of habit, piece by piece, angle by angle, dug down to see where exactly they had come from. She wanted to get it "just right", so that whatever she wrote would be justified, perfect and invincible.
One day, she got tired because there were no results. Everything was swarming in her head but she couldn't see anything, couldn't touch anything, had produced nothing. At the same time, life occurred and visions continued to form. Images rushed past her from outside car windows on vacation, plane windows on work travel, bus windows in the chilly mornings, apartment windows on sunny and gray weekends alike. Late at night, numbers blinked at her from computer screens. There was too much information.
There was a park bench on a November morning. The parks are crowded in mornings, she thought. There are moving pieces everywhere, streams of people flowing in response to the directions of another. And horse carriages, and joggers, and suits flapping shiny black shoes on the ground as they paddle on to work. People come here as if following the wind, and they blow away. Nobody plans this. Nobody stops. What if I stayed to watch? Who would I see?
For some reason, she thought of him.
She went into the gift shop and bought a camera. This would be life. That was her craft, to capture things as they took even their first, most fledgling forms. It would not be chiseled or sharp, but rather frequently blurry and indeterminate. But that was the craft, to capture--not perfect--the pieces as they moved and morphed, and receded from her grasp. There would be feelings, memories unexpectedly arising at restaurant tables, on a park bench, while watching a film of a ruffled-hair boy drawing a name in the sand with his toes. In unforeseeable ways, the yearnings would be triggered. And maybe that was all that would be, a wind stirring about, opaque forms and images, a recognition arising purely from memory- from faith- that some synthesis has just occurred.
That would be life. Life is not a controlled experiment. Things happen outside, swarming around and disturbing things. Not everything we feel everyday is a discrete package of analysis, a report of observations, a chart showing definitive trends. There is no answer. At some point, the sense-making has to stop.
One day, she got tired because there were no results. Everything was swarming in her head but she couldn't see anything, couldn't touch anything, had produced nothing. At the same time, life occurred and visions continued to form. Images rushed past her from outside car windows on vacation, plane windows on work travel, bus windows in the chilly mornings, apartment windows on sunny and gray weekends alike. Late at night, numbers blinked at her from computer screens. There was too much information.
There was a park bench on a November morning. The parks are crowded in mornings, she thought. There are moving pieces everywhere, streams of people flowing in response to the directions of another. And horse carriages, and joggers, and suits flapping shiny black shoes on the ground as they paddle on to work. People come here as if following the wind, and they blow away. Nobody plans this. Nobody stops. What if I stayed to watch? Who would I see?
For some reason, she thought of him.
She went into the gift shop and bought a camera. This would be life. That was her craft, to capture things as they took even their first, most fledgling forms. It would not be chiseled or sharp, but rather frequently blurry and indeterminate. But that was the craft, to capture--not perfect--the pieces as they moved and morphed, and receded from her grasp. There would be feelings, memories unexpectedly arising at restaurant tables, on a park bench, while watching a film of a ruffled-hair boy drawing a name in the sand with his toes. In unforeseeable ways, the yearnings would be triggered. And maybe that was all that would be, a wind stirring about, opaque forms and images, a recognition arising purely from memory- from faith- that some synthesis has just occurred.
That would be life. Life is not a controlled experiment. Things happen outside, swarming around and disturbing things. Not everything we feel everyday is a discrete package of analysis, a report of observations, a chart showing definitive trends. There is no answer. At some point, the sense-making has to stop.
posted by Quang Tran at 5:55 PM
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