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I stare at her chest. As she breathes, the rounded peaks move up and down like the swell of waves, somehow reminding me of rain falling softly on a broad stretch of sea. I’m the lonely voyager standing on the deck, and she’s the sea. The sky is a blanket of grey, merging with the grey sea off on the horizon. It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.
I nod. Becoming a different person might be hard, but taking on a different name is child’s play.
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out from between their pages – a special odour of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.
Kids’ hearts are malleable, but once they gel it’s hard to get them back the way they were.
It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.
It’s just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just as we see with Eichmann.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilisation as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it’s true – all civilisation is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom.
That’s what Kafka means in Czech, you know – crow.”
“The strength I’m looking for isn’t the kind where you win or lose. I’m not after a wall that’ll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things – unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.”
“There’s another world that parallels our own, and to a certain degree you’re able to step into that other world and come back safely. As long as you’re careful. But go past a certain point and you’ll lose the path out.
“Without those peak experiences our lives would be pretty dull and flat.
No matter how much money you accumulate, you can’t buy time.
Memory isn’t so important here. The library handles memories.”
