"The god of the imagination is the imagination. The law of the imagination is, whatever works. The law of the imagination is not universal truth, but the work's truth, fought for and won."
Salman Rushdie, The ground beneath her feet
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But let's just suppose. What if the whole deal-orientation, knowing were you are, and so on-what if it's all a scam? What if all of it-home, kinship, the whole enchilada-is just the biggest, most truly global, and centuries-old piece of brainwashing? Suppose that it's only when you dare to let go that your real life begins? When you're whirling free of the mothership, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever: suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act! To lead the life nobody tells you how to live, or when, or why. In which nobody orders you to go forth and die for them, or for god, or comes to get you because you broke one of the rules, or because you're one of those people who are, for reasons which unfortunately you can't be given, simply not allowed. Suppose you've got to go through the feeling of being lost, into the chaos and beyond; you've got to accept the loneliness, the wild panic of losing your moorings, the vertiginous terror of the horizon spinning round and round like the edge of a coin tossed in the air.
ReplyDeleteYou won't do it. Most of you won't do it.
... But just imagine you did it. You stepped off the edge of the earth, or through the fatal waterfall, and there it was: the magic valley at the end of the universe, the blessed kingdom of the air. Great music everywhere. You breathe the music in and out, it's your element now. It feels better than 'belonging' in your lungs.
Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet