falter ego
16 August 2008 @ 09:54 pm
Margaret Atwood "Murder in the Dark"  
A Parable

I'm in a room with no windows that open and no doors that close, which may sound like an insane asylum but is actually a room, the room where I'm sitting to write to you once more, one more letter, one more piece of paper, deaf, dumb and blind. When I'm finished I will throw it into the air and as we say it will disappear, but the air will not think so.
I'm listening to your questions. The reason I don't answer them is that they are not questions at all. Is there any answer to a stone or the sun? What is this for? you say, to which the only possible reply is that we are not all utilitarians. Who are you really? is the question asked by the worm of the apple on the way through. A gnawed core may be the centre but is it the reality?
As for me, I may not be anything at all but the space between your right hand and your left hand when your hands are on my shoulders. I keep your right hand and your left hand apart, through me they also touch. It feels like silence, which is a sound also. I am the time it takes you to think about that. You enter my time, you leave it, I cannot enter or leave, why ask me? You know what it looks like and I don't. Mirrors are no use at all.
Ask me instead who you are: when you walk into this room through the door that isn't there, it's not myself I see but you.
 
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