Quand'ero giovane leggevo sempre, avevo paura di perdermi qualcosa, e adesso ho l'idea che il perso e il trovato vadano nello stesso alveo. Forse l'unica cosa da capire è quanto siamo estranei e inadatti alla "vita piena di pena", l'unica che c'è (calamità, dolore, morte). E come tutto lavori a dismemorarci, ci aiuti a mettere degli argini, per poter dire che "ha i suoi lati buoni" [...] insomma per dire e mostrare sempre e dovunque che è una cosa tutta diversa da quello che è.
I don’t think anybody ever knows what another person means when they speak, frankly. It’s more than translation, it’s just throwing yourself into the dark. Language is so very, very personal, private. Weird. I guess you could think of it as translation, that seems like a kind of euphemistic metaphor. It’s probably a lot more hopeless than that. But the effort of speaking as a human is the effort to get past that hopelessness with every sentence.
Anne Carson - Paris Review Interview, April 2024
and that you had not wanted to lose any word, any thought -
that you had been reading and been loving your attic place, your first flat was attic and it just makes you happy to see the sky. you had listened to estonian choral music for no reason other that lieke marsman had mentioned it and that day when her book came out and that was the day everyone was reading it, you too and enjoying it, that is not the right word, you found it very moving that's also not the right word. you cannot explain - how that is that it was a different type of moving - things so direct and real and faced so directly,...perhaps her writing brought everything closer to life, that's it....made everything more precious... the acknowledgement of things that cannot be easily explained; of meaning that maybe does not exactly correspond to reality but still has its very right to exist....
someone you know working on forgiveness, telling you about derrida and how forgiveness is not possible in the present tense, something along those lines. you wanted to look this up. forgiveness -- you thought. ask forgiveness, bonnie prince billy. the hague, the city of peace and justice. you can see the peace palace from your balcony, it is not far.
someone was saying they were thinking about the difference between agape and eros and you thought but didn't say: good luck with that, and said instead: was - isnt that hannah arendt's phd? you have complicated feelings about arendt.
your thinking you're having a lot of love and a lot of pain in your life, and remembering your ill friend saying something like that, about his slowly crippling disease: i dont know what i did to deserve this -but then he is doing extremely well at staying alive, outliving every prognosis: i don't know what i did to deserve this either... what do you do with irreconcilable things, or seemingly irreconcilable...
you had started to think about pain differently, you wouldn't be able to explain this difference
you thought about your life and felt dizzy -
whenever you can & you're not by the sea you stay in bed to write, you started to feel a bit more introvert again, important things in your soul shifting, wanting some expression..... you're still translating yourself (even to yourself)
someone is saying that writing is actually thinking, thinking without writing is not real thinking....
someone asked you what did you read. you did not have many people in the uk asking you that. it took you by surprise... that you're not used to that anymore, all these bookish people that are suddenly back in your life...
and so this, what you hope to be your last international move, your being here again, your coming back to nl and when you arrived, by train, late at night, thinking you're 5 minutes in this country and already 3 people have smiled at you. leaving britain felt like the rectification of a mistake. and now you've reorganzized your books and your colours and the sky has become wider, having found a different a newe (you like that: newe) harmony. your existence more harmonious. and the etymology of that, making something fit together... and you sorted your clothes according colour too and that was unintentional.
you say this to e, who is a retired medical doctor, who calls you meisje, you tell him about ordering your books by colour and he said that's a form of love too.
and so you're just thinking about the harmony of colours and light and a lot of other things besides that... & you're allowing that to change you...