16.5.06

Do you see?

"I do not understand you."
"By the way they looked at me, by their perception of me, they would make me into the creature they perceived. I would feel myself becoming a lesser thing. It is the power of men."
"But I am a man."
"No," she said, too impatient to let him develop his argument. "Of men, men in a group, men in their certainty, men on a street corner, or in a hall."
--- Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey
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1 Comments:

At 5/16/2006 4:12 PM , Blogger TaLieSin said...

I think it cuts both ways, a la TS Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'...

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

 

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