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He sits down at his desk and begins to think about
it
But thinking about it does not fathom it or keep
it in place
Thinking about it as he sits there unmoors it and
puts it in motion
So that now as the thinking about it turns into words
and these words into sentences the it begins to change,
slip away
So that even this slight and habitual pleasure of
putting together words into structures is poisoned
by his growing realization of a deep missingness underneath
and behind these structures
So that the more he writes about the world the less
there is of it left to write about
So that writing disappears the world So that even
outdoors is indoors
So that thinking about this suffocation into a structure
of words to dwell in as a way of temporarily easing
this suffocation kicks in an inescapable cycle
So that every fresh insight his feverish thinking
about it procures arrives stale, empty and malodorous
So that was that what he felt or was that a fabrication
of what was once reported about an approximate or
parallel sensation
So that if only he could scratch the dirt to cover
the disgrace of thinking about it, but the disgrace
is not out there in the yard or buried in his heart
Rather, he is buried in it
He is inside a secret that is slipping away. It is
his home
It has windows out of which he looks
Joe Eliott
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I thought
of the pit which used to be right next to the
building, the bottomless pit that had inspired shivers
of fear at night, not only in me but in all
the pretty children, girls, and adults who lived
on all the floors.... They were afraid of the secret
inside themselves as if fearful of a past sin that
could not stay buried in the past for all eternity.
Eventually they forgot about the pit, its memories
and secrets as well as what it contained, like instinctive
animals who scratch some dirt to conceal their disgrace.
One morning, waking up from a black nightmare that
seethed with human faces, I discovered that the pit
had been covered over. It was then that I understood
with horror, gripped by the same nightmarish feeling,
that the pit had been turned inside
out, and it now rose out of the site
that was once called the pit. They had a new way of
referring to this new space that brought mystery and
death up to our very windows; they called this dark
well the air shaft.
Orhan
Pamuk
from The Black
Book
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