conflict of horizons

if inspector jabert, eponine, cosette and marius are to speak about jean valjean - no doubt they will come up with conflicting images. facets and information about the person's character may even be confused as each one lay claim on a certain personality. a reader/listener may be tempted to say - jean valjean is essentially schismatic, a contested persona - therefore it is not wise to ever bother asking about him.

who is the true jean valjean? yes you may ask that but such query on a literary character is irrelevant. Fiction cares not about questions of factual truth! it is not lying either, however. if the characters speak about another character, they may not be in the realm of what you call truth, and yet they cannot be called liars either. but that being the point - it is unwise to not bother about the character of jean valjean for carrying schismatic and contesting perspectives. if at all the characters in presenting him to us are inviting us to know who he is.

Mark Twain spoke about a terrible character in what some claim as sacred writings. Twain's words are limited in that he reads the different accounts as if they are a slate of zeroes and ones in a binary logic board. different writers came up with conflicting things? what's new with that? i bet if we ask his mother, friend and enemy to write Twain's elegy then we'll have the same thing too. the last writer may not even give us an elegy at all! but this time it's no longer in the realm of literary characters for we're in a wilder and more complicated terrain. should we not bother with who he is? should tom sawyer and huck finn be relegated to rotting bookshelves and not be read ever again? of course not, these are all invitations for us to know him more...

and so we're still here

deep breaths....
yes still alive, don't have to be today but....
events may choke up stints that can make a day, a week, a month or even a year. who knows? the booker of bookers writer may show up again in one of the U2 concerts like he did in Wembley Stadium, or Cat Stevens might break his musical silence in Kingston University once more just so he could denounce Salman Rushdie. it may even be as low as Laura Bush admitting on National TV that she is a desperate housewife! the gloomy horizon is here so any stirrings that are of light even if of kitsch wacky value are welcome.

why am i not taking my life today? the nobel prize laureate asked in his book. Camus' wager of living the query came up pretty distinctly "because am no coward." he whispers through his letters: Sisyphus must be humming a tune to himself as he goes down the hill to try to roll the huge rock up again. Even the mighty Prometheus must have found himself a friend in the Eathon monster and started at one point to bless the night for time to grow back his half liver - just so the next day the great eagle has something to munch on. Eternity is a long passing after all... let's see how it unravels today.

the freshness of damp and mud

nothing compares to a dawn run after the rain. the sun is out at last and all around are busy insects and lush. recovering the self again from slumber and nightmare, one sees that light is still bright and that shadows can sometimes bring comfort. another day of life and brokenness, just staying on consenting to where it leads...