Asymmetry

by Lisa Halliday

We all live slapstick lives, under an inexplicable sentence of death . . . —MARTIN GARDNER, The Annotated Alice

You are an empty vessel for a long time, then something grows that you don’t want, something creeps into it that you actually cannot do. The God of Chance creates in us. . . . Endeavours in art require a lot of patience. And below that: An artist, I think, is nothing but a powerful memory that can move itself at will through certain experiences sideways

“for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.”

but he distorted it, for levity’s sake.

“when I was very young, very foolish, and very much alone . . . you paid attention to me and, without seeming to, you opened for me the door to everything I love in the world.”

does one man’s delusion become the world’s reality? Is it every generation’s destiny to contend with a dictator’s whims? “By shrewd and constant application of propaganda,” we read in Mein Kampf, “heaven can be presented to the people as hell and, vice versa, the wretchedest experience as a paradise.” But only when the people in question fail in their duty toward vigilance. Only when through inaction we are complicit. Only when we are sleepwalking ourselves.