Knee 169
[Geri had her knee surgery this morning. It went well and she's already home and sleeping off the rest of her anaesthesia. While sitting in the waiting room of the Cleveland Clinic's surgery center somewhere on the cusp of Amherst and Vermilion, Ohio, I wrote the following in my pocket journal:]
I just read text 169 of Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet and it expresses well much of what I've been feeling lately re writing.
It's hard for me to focus and write what I want because I keep listening to others' conversations. But since what I want to say regards the worthlessness of my writing, I suppose I shouldn't be so bothered that I'm not writing it — at least if I mean it (I think I do) and I'm right (what is right?).
I would like to buy a beverage, but am afraid to leave the waiting room in case they call my name.
[And the following is text 169 of Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, as translated into English by Richard Zenith and published by Penguin Classics:]
Page by page I slowly and lucidly reread everything I've written, and I find that it's all worthless and should have been left unwritten. The things we achieve, whether empires or sentences, have (because they've been achieved) the worst aspect of real things: the fact they're perishable. But that's not what worries or grieves me about these pages as I reread them now, in these idle moments. What grieves me is that it wasn't worth my trouble to write them, and the time I spent doing it earned me nothing but the illusion, now shattered, that it was worth doing.
Whatever we pursue, we pursue for the sake of an ambition, but either we never realize the ambition, and we're poor, or think we've realized it and we're rich fools.
What grieves me is that my best is no good, and that another whom I dream of, if he existed, would have done it better. Everything we do , in art or in life, is the imperfect copy of what we thought of doing. It belies the notion of inner as well as of outer perfection; it falls short not only of the standard it should meet but also of the standard we thought it could meet. We're hollow on the inside as well as on the outside, pariahs in our expectations and in our realizations.
With what power of the solitary human soul I produced page after reclusive page, living syllable by syllable the false magic, not of what I wrote, but of what I thought I was writing! As if under an ironic sorcerer's spell, I imagined myself the poet of my prose, in the winged moments when it welled up in me - swifter than the strokes of my pen - like an illusory revenge against the insults of life! And today, rereading, I see my dolls bursting, the straw coming out of their torn seams, eviscerated without ever having been...
I just read text 169 of Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet and it expresses well much of what I've been feeling lately re writing.
It's hard for me to focus and write what I want because I keep listening to others' conversations. But since what I want to say regards the worthlessness of my writing, I suppose I shouldn't be so bothered that I'm not writing it — at least if I mean it (I think I do) and I'm right (what is right?).
I would like to buy a beverage, but am afraid to leave the waiting room in case they call my name.
[And the following is text 169 of Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, as translated into English by Richard Zenith and published by Penguin Classics:]
Page by page I slowly and lucidly reread everything I've written, and I find that it's all worthless and should have been left unwritten. The things we achieve, whether empires or sentences, have (because they've been achieved) the worst aspect of real things: the fact they're perishable. But that's not what worries or grieves me about these pages as I reread them now, in these idle moments. What grieves me is that it wasn't worth my trouble to write them, and the time I spent doing it earned me nothing but the illusion, now shattered, that it was worth doing.
Whatever we pursue, we pursue for the sake of an ambition, but either we never realize the ambition, and we're poor, or think we've realized it and we're rich fools.
What grieves me is that my best is no good, and that another whom I dream of, if he existed, would have done it better. Everything we do , in art or in life, is the imperfect copy of what we thought of doing. It belies the notion of inner as well as of outer perfection; it falls short not only of the standard it should meet but also of the standard we thought it could meet. We're hollow on the inside as well as on the outside, pariahs in our expectations and in our realizations.
With what power of the solitary human soul I produced page after reclusive page, living syllable by syllable the false magic, not of what I wrote, but of what I thought I was writing! As if under an ironic sorcerer's spell, I imagined myself the poet of my prose, in the winged moments when it welled up in me - swifter than the strokes of my pen - like an illusory revenge against the insults of life! And today, rereading, I see my dolls bursting, the straw coming out of their torn seams, eviscerated without ever having been...
Posted by Jesus Crisis at 7/13/2011 1:15 PM 
Categories: Writing and Poetry, Miscellaneous
Tags: Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet Hospital Geri Lynne Burroughs
Categories: Writing and Poetry, Miscellaneous
Tags: Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet Hospital Geri Lynne Burroughs
"And today, rereading, I see my dolls bursting, the straw coming out of their torn seams, eviscerated without ever having been... "...
i too had these feelings and came to a decision that i have been forcing my words to fall into the "poetry" category..i chose not to examine why that was or how it came to be. i merely write now for me, the release of all these words (perhaps the overabundance of words and capturing life as i experience it come from being born deaf. i am able to hear perfectly now, but recall that sound of silence)... my writes have to measure up to no one... not even the universe.. they just are...
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I have thoughts that are very similar...it expresses itself as almost an inner ache. I think all individuals don't just question their writing or their ambition but their worth. And not just in respect to others but in their own eyes as well. Are we all that we can be?
I've been thinking a lot about why I do what I do... and I do most of it to be noticed and a need to feel accepted instead of doing it for myself or for the satisfaction of just doing.
And when I do things for others then I necessarily measure it by a standard that keeps changing... because peoples expectations are all different.
So I've decided to follow what the i-ching has been trying to teach me for months and months... to move from the center- it calls it Inner Truth- Zhong Fu-also expressed in the phrase open hearted- but what's meant by that is an unwavering spot that doesn't change.. a stable balanced place within that a person moves outwards from in all they do.. And I'm finding when I'm in balance inside I feel in balance outside with other people too.
Anyway... this was not meant to preach or anything... just reading your entry above really resonated with me.. so I wanted to articulate a little of what's been on my mind of late...
Because disharmony between people also comes from imbalance... inner peace and outer peace go hand in hand... so I need to work on my portion of it.
I think dissatisfaction is useful... it forces necessary changes.. and if we listen to our inner voice.. the true one... it can help move us to where we really need to be..
I'm trying very hard to do that now...
anyway.. peace...
may you find what you are looking for John.
and don't stop writing... just write from your heart.
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"Better to write than to dare live." Pessoa writes this intriguing line at the end of 170. But he also says this in 144:
"Yes, what I am would be unbearable if I couldn't remember what I've been."
I personally have spent my life daring to live and now I need to write. And what I have been is far more important
to remember than to worry about who I am and how I live right now in my latter
years. Siento luego soy means I feel therefore I exist. I could change that to Amo luego soy..I love therefore I exist and that takes me one step further than Unamuno or even Pessoa.
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another, perhaps brighter perspective....
You see, man is in need of a Symbolic Life – badly in need. Only the Symbolic Life can express the need of the soul – the daily need of the soul, mind you! And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of this mill – this awful, grinding, banal life in which they are “nothing but.” We have no symbolic existence in which we are something else, in which we are fulfilling our role as one of the actors in the divine drama of life. That gives peace, when people feel that they are living the Symbolic Life, that they are actors in the divine drama. It expresses the desire of the soul, the actual facts of our unconscious life. For the Symbolic Life is one of the most essential manifestations of the human mind. It is an experience, not an opinion, an experience nothing can take it away from you. And it means more than the whole world, because it makes sense.
C. G. Jung, from The Symbolic Life, CW 18 §608- 696.
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Actions, not achievements, define a person's character.
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