Echo

Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005, speaking to The Guardian:

When you are young, things like your moral stance and your political position seem very important. I'd spend long nights with my friends sorting out moral and political positions that we thought would take us through adult life. And part of that would end up meaning we despised some people not for what they did, but for the opinions they professed to hold. But as I've got older I think I've realised that while it is important to have principles, you have far less control of what happens. These principles and positions only get you so far because what actually happens is that you don't carefully chart your way through life. You are picked up by a wind every now and again and dumped down somewhere else.


John Banville, 2010, speaking to The Millions:

It’s an adventure I’ve embarked on, and whether I’m making a mistake or otherwise, I don’t know. But we stumble along in darkness. We think that we’re deciding to do things, we think that we’re directing our lives, but we’re not. We’re just being blown hither and thither by the wind.

Back from the rack

I never quite did make a new blog. No, well, I did, I did create a new one, never used it, forgot its password and everything, and blah, it's safe to say I never really made it. Because a blog is made not by signing up for a blog account and choosing an affected template and giving it an acutely affected title, but by posting stuff on it, coming back to it some times and putting down some good goddamn piece of your head on it. Anyway, I'm back here, the reasons are several, but the most important is that it's forgotten about, I hope, by people who I hoped would forget it. The last time I used to blog, I wanted the blog to be a certain type of a blog, and I was a bit of a (not 'bit of a', actually) fraud in that I wanted the blog to be a certain type of a blog in order I be seen as a certain type of a blogger. Really bad thing, I agree, and I agree that fraudulence is oftentimes called by names such as self-consciousness, political-correctness and etcetera and etcetera, by who else but we frauds ourselves, but, in the end, fraudulence is fraudulence, is, fraudulence. In the end it all gets down to the desire, the kill, the over-ambition to be seen as a certain type, the type that you saw someone else was and were smitten or awed or enamored by, or envied or liked or loved so much you resented. Anyway, so since this time, I would like to think, since I am largely free of the façade (although that's a dangerous thing to believe) I think I am likely to post a lot more frequently, because stuff that got held back earlier for reasons hideous as I just explained, won't any longer be similarly held back, like the post I am going to post right after this one. Besides, the fact that I am unemployed now means I have more time.