We tell ourselves stories in order to live, or to justify taking lives, even our own, by violence or numbness and the failure to live; tell ourselves stories that save us and stories that are the quicksand in which we thrash and the well in which we drown, …
Sometimes the story collapses, and it demands that we recognize we’ve been lost, or terrible, or ridiculous, or just stuck; …
Not a few stories are sinking ships, and many of us go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are bobbing all around us.
Rebecca Solnit: The Faraway Nearby (2013)
sub rosa 
Intriguing. Look at one can do with this (on the foundation that the “I” was invented by Fichte in Jena in 1793 as a tool for scientific relativism, at the same time that modern acting, and its characters, were being invented down the street in the Brühler Theatre in Gotha). The techniques were adopted by the romantics, who made of them ‘personal’ characters, or persons. In other words, the self behind this quote is a romantic poem or artefact. Finding its context might cast light on a different corner of the mind…
Characters tell themselves stories in order to live, or to justify taking lives, even their own, by violence or numbness and the failure to live; tell themselves stories that save them and stories that are the quicksand in which they thrash and the well in which they drown, …
Sometimes the story collapses, and it demands that characters recognize they’ve been lost, or terrible, or ridiculous, or just stuck; …
Not a few stories are sinking ships, and many characters go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are bobbing all around them.
Intriguing indeed, I’m discovering myself as an ex-deconstructivistic romantic – .
By the way, all this “bobbing” reminded me of some favorite lines:
LOOK AT THE SEA OTTERS BOBBING WILDLY
OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE POEM
THEY LOOK SO EAGER AND PEACEFUL PLAYING OUT THERE WHERE THE
WATER HARDLY MOVES
YOU MIGHT GET OUT THROUGH ALL THE WAVES AND ROCKS
INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE POEM TO TOUCH THEM
BUT WHEN YOU’VE TRIED THE BLESSED WATER LONG
ENOUGH TO WANT TO START BACKWARD
THAT’S WHEN THE FUN STARTS
UNLESS YOU’RE A POET OR AN OTTER OR SOMETHING SUPERNATURAL
YOU’LL DROWN, DEAR. YOU’LL DROWN
Nice lines. And, golly, look how the words “poem” and “poet” can be replaced by “god”, without losing ‘meaning’. Fascinating, these different lenses! Hey, I hope you like http://www.witual.wordpress.com today. I put in the bit about colour just for you. No blue, though. The blue flowers didn’t turn out so well. They picked up too much light.