To-Day
I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom—in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.
Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, I pottered, I talked, and took exercise; and I sat punctually down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals.
Stonehenge
They sit there forever on the dim horizon of my mind, that Stonehenge circle of elderly disapproving Faces—Faces of the Uncles and Schoolmasters and Tutors who frowned on my youth.
In the bright centre and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my dance; but when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For nothing ever placates them, nothing ever moves to a look of approval that ring of bleak and contemptuous Faces.
The Sound of a Voice
As the thoughtful Baronet talked, as his voice went on sounding in my ears, all the light of desire, and of the sun, faded from the Earth; I saw the vast landscape of the world dim, as in an eclipse; its populations eating their bread with tears, its rich men sitting listless in their palaces, and aged Kings crying "Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity!" lugubriously from their thrones.
Dissatisfaction
For one thing I hate Spiders—I dislike all kinds of Insects. Their cold intelligence, their empty, stereotyped, unremitted industry repel me. And I am not altogether happy about the future of the Human Race; when I think of the slow refrigeration of the Earth, the Sun's waning, and the ultimate, inevitable collapse of the Solar System, I have grave misgivings. And all the books I have read and forgotten-the thought that my mind is really nothing but a sieve—this, too, at times disheartens me.
(from Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith Trivia )
2 comments:
A wonderful book. Regarding spiders and the mind as a sieve, I am fond of another fine entry in Trivia (my apologies for the length):
The Spider
What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse?
No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its geometric centre, pondering for ever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless and spider-like the uncanny Soul.
By the way (and as you probably already know), a volume titled All Trivia (published in 1933) contains Trivia, as well as three subsequent collections: More Trivia, Afterthoughts, and Last Words.
Stephen Pentz:
I came across Logan Pearsall Smith as book barrow trove. It was his Reperusals and Re-Collections (1936). At present I am reading his long essay on English Aphorists
Experience is always seeking for special literary forms in which its various aspects can find their most adequate expression; and there are many of these aspects which are best rendered in a fragmentary fashion, because they are themselves fragments of experience, gleams and flashes of light, rather than the steady glow of a larger illumination.
Clarity of exposition without the taint of punctiliousness is rare.
Thanks for your comment,
Best Wishes,
Michael
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