Random Excerpts - 2: Ice In My Eyes Smoke In Yours, a Novel
May 29, 1957: …have to think about getting a thesis director…know no professor yet in the department…someone suggested i get hold of Derek Fogg for an intro to the big guns in the philosophisches Seminar…can't bother him too much…i like the way he lectures…lively, informative, obviously in tune with his subject, emitting an air of being on top form nearly always and always ready with an answer…someone said he too is looking for a prof to direct or rather accept his dissert on Bernard Shaw…he's been working on the man for years…he's easily the most knowledgeable on Shaw, the fin de siècle and Edwardian period…guess he knows his Shakespeare too from the constant references he makes to the master… and to Marlowe, Sheridan, Oscar Wilde, and Galsworthy … must admit i like the man…affable, courteous, always considerate and above all open, honest, and forthright…i think he likes me too…he liked my poems…his girl though German is curiously very English…she's a demure, pretty brunette, not as tall as he is but cast in the same mould: not too lean, not too skinny, just right i'd say…she smiles naturally, looks innocent, at least without guile, no hang-ups or pretences…quiet, in any case, doesn't say much whenever i'm around and doesn't object to my presenting myself in their after all tiny Collegium Academicum room…she seems very content with her catch…wasn't she a student of his, someone said…don't know many students at the hostel… the place was meant mainly for scholarship holders and lecturers…
(…)
…and so has Nature's purpose been achieved: ETERNEL CONFLICT but in cyclic periods, the yearly seasonal changes to the Brahma Day…the YIN half of the year buckling under to the YANG half…to the Brahma Night…the BIG BANG to the BIG CRUNCH…no, no I'm afraid to the gobbling up of all matter…yes, even dark matter in the universe…and even universes through the blackest of BLACK HOLES…
…what we see is what we don't if we do not have eyes…light travels in photons always on and on without impulsion without cause until the point of mirage until the point of no return until what we see is circumscribed by reflection of what we can see up to a point… up to a point which is only verifiable with eyes…NO ONE HAS EVER COME BACK…we can never know while still alive if all this and that exists when we are not here…in any case if we see at all when we are gone, it may not necessarily be what we see while still here…all the rest is conjecture…what we see exists what we don't may still exist if we tried to see…Orion exists maybe when i see…does it exist when i'm not looking…does it matter that it exists for my life to be realised…astrologers would say yes…pork-sellers might think it a waste of time even to think of such a thing…all we know is that everything exists for us because we exist…otherwise there's no reason why anything else should be existing…everything else that is we can see…there are things that exist even if we can't see them…like dark matter…that is things exist also if we can deduce their existence…in other words we can see them because we have still eyes….but what happens when we are dead…do we continue to see…the answer to this question is simply we don't really know…it's no use if ONE Christ resurrects…can he return to say he actually resurrected…why can't he…what's the reason…don't tell me it's not the right time yet…that he had sent his emissaries to Lourdes…all that sort of "reasoning" is conjecture or sophistry…why should there be doubt…why can't life be more certain more definitive…is it because it isn't…that it's just a mirage, an illusion MAYA…you know only what you see what you don't see you don't know is the only possible truth…all other forms of reasoning have given us the gods the faithful the priests the vendors of commodities without proof of the possession of goods…has created classes clergy castes medicine men voodoo women witches prelates churches synagogues mosques temples lodges cathedrals houses of prayer…in short power houses…in turn to keep the faithful orderly not anarchistic obedient herded together disciplined capable of communal life capable of promoting truth…their own truth…their own brand of life…their own insignia of race in the end for faith is race race is faith in the centre of masses leaving the periphery open to conversion even if races have sprung from the bushmen of the east African divide and all the languages from their click-clacking tongue-cluckers...
…are the ruba'iyats attributed to Omar Khayyam his and therefore right then…live all you can…
Excerpted from T. Wignesan. Ice in My Eyes Smoke in Yours. A Novel. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2016, 672p.
© T. Wignesan - Paris, 2018
Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2018
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