 |
| Click image for more vignettes |
Goines tried to remember the name of the woman who lived with that other woman whose name both he and Mrs. Goines could remember. Goines was finding that many names once familiar to him had faded and maybe entirely disappeared, though sometimes some of them seemed to flicker anew and sound their presence.
Ever mindful of the task he had set himself to create (or imagine) a model of a person’s personal world – the only world anyone had or experienced, “the world” itself being only a model – Goines reinvented his globe, his ball of yarn, as a map of projected east-west and north-south lines made of decaying rope onto whose intersections names were projected like maps zoomed in and out of, most names always missing, names of present interest present (or not) as intersections of frayed rope might reveal or lose them in breaks and tears.
The weave of his personal world was ever changing as his mind and body aged and his friendships and acquaintances and occupations evolved, many more of them loosening and letting go than staying and strengthening.
| Copyright © 2020 by Moristotle |
It seems the older we get the more introspective we become; perhaps we just have more time. When we're young we're pushing, trudging, trying to accomplish, get ahead. Later it's time to reflect on what all that pushing and trudging got us, or didn't.
ReplyDeleteOr on what it meant. In my case, I think it’s true that I’ve become more introspective, and maybe even, at least in part, because I have more time to be so. But getting older provides more perspective, more opportunity to compare, to observe things’ evolution (their growth and dissolution over years), things that from close-up seem more stable and certain than they really are.
Delete