cantabile
@cantabile
77 okur puanı
Temmuz 2017 tarihinde katıldı
''I returned to London from Barbados to find that the city had stubbornly refused to change. I had seen azure skies and giant sea anemones, I had slept in a raffia bungalow and eaten a kingfish, I had swum beside baby turtles and read in the shade of coconut trees. But my hometown was unimpressed. It was still raining. The park was still a pond; the skies were still funereal. When we are in
a good mood and it is sunny we may be tempted to impute a connection between what happens inside and outside of us, but the appearance of London on my return was a reminder of the indifference of the world to any of the events unfolding in the lives of its habitants. I felt despair at being home. I felt there could be few worse places on earth than the one I had been fated to spend my existence in.
...There are some who have crossed deserts, floated on ice caps and cut their way through jungles but whose souls we would search in vain for evidence of what they have witnessed. Dressed in pink and-blue pyjamas, satisfied within the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen.''
Hangi tür kitapları seviyorsun?
🔎 Polisiye
💕 Romantik
🚀 Bilim Kurgu
🏰 Fantastik
📖 Klasik
🧠 Kişisel Gelişim
🏛️ Tarih
😱 Gerilim
''Amirli memurlu işleri de denedim. Malum ya, herkes şuna inandığından, buna inandığından, haktan hukuktan söz eder durur. Onlar zaten mevsimine göre neye inanmaları ve neye inanmamaları gerektiğini pek iyi bilirler. Ama asıl inandıkları bir şey varsa, o da paradır. Parayı verene de mutlaka gülümsemek gerekir. Bir gün
iki gün insan kendini zorlayarak gülümsüyor. Hey gidi dünya! İnsanoğlu ne biçim insanlara gülümsemek zorundandır. İnsan, eninde sonunda dudaklarında gülümsemeyle durakladığından kuşkulanıyor. Gece evde hala gülümsüyor muyum , diye aynaya bakardım. Olur ya, söndürülmesi unutulduğu için gündüzün gereksiz yere yanmakta devam eden bir elektrik lambasına dönmüş olabilirdim.
Sonra bana ağır gelen bir şey varsa, o da Frenklerin 'routine' dedikleri şeydi. Her gün aynı saatte işe git! Yolda belirli dükkanlardan sigara, kibrit al. Üsküdar'dan belirli bir vapura bin. Köprü'de tramvayı bekle. Tramvayı boş bulursan bin! Ayakta duracak kadar yer yoksa, daha sonra gelecek tramvayı bekle. Rastladığın şu ya da bu insana havadan, palamut balıklarının fiyatlarından söz et. Her gün aynı idarehanenin aynı küflü havasını kokla! Aynı masaya otur, eş dost, 'Amma da yakıştın!' desin. Aynı işi gör. Ha yağmur ha çamur; ya da günlük güneşlik, aynı saatte deliğine dalan karınca gibi aynı Tünel'e gir! Aynı Beyoğlu'na ya da aynı Galata'ya in çık. İşte herkes üzüntü, yorgunluk ve bezginlikle bu angaryaları inatla, gayretle sürükler de sürükler. Bu yapılırken hiçbir şey yaratılmaz, bir noksan tamamlanmaz, var olana bir var daha katılmaz. Ölünceye kadar böyle bir hayatı yaşayacağımı düşündükçe beni bir korku, bir ürpertidir alıyordu. Bana hayatın böylesinde kalacaksın demek, bir palamut balığına, 'Sen karaya çıkacaksın da kümeste tavuk gibi yaşayacaksın!' demek gibi olurdu.''
''Des Esseintes concluded, in Huysmans's words, that ‘the imagination could provide a more-than-adequate substitute for the vulgar reality of actual experience'.''
''Our misery that afternoon, in which the smell of tears mixed with the scents of sun cream and air conditioning, was a reminder of the rigid, unforgiving logic to which human moods appear to be subject, a logic that we ignore at our peril when we encounter a picture of a beautiful land and imagine that happiness must naturally accompany such magnificence. Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. Thus we will not enjoy—we are not able to enjoy—sumptuous tropical gardens and attractive wooden beach huts when a relationship to which we are committed abruptly reveals itself to be suffused with incomprehension and resentment.''
''Yet this description only imperfectly reflects what occurred within me that morning, for my attention was in truth far more fractured and confused than the foregoing paragraphs suggest. I may have noticed a few birds careering through the air in matinal excitement, but my awareness of them was weakened by a number of other, incongruous and unrelated elements, among them a sore throat I had developed during the flight, worry over not having informed a colleague that I would be away, a pressure across both temples and a rising need to visit the bathroom. A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent: I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.
It is easy for us to forget ourselves when we contemplate pictorial and verbal descriptions of places. At home, as my eyes had panned over photographs of Barbados, there were no reminders that those eyes were intimately tied to a body and mind that would travel with me wherever I went and that might, over time, assert their presence in ways that would threaten or even negate the purpose of what the eyes had come there to see. At home I could concentrate on pictures of a hotel room, a beach or a sky and ignore the complex creature in which this observation was taking place and for whom it was only a small part of a larger, more multifaceted task of living.
My body and mind were to prove temperamental accomplices in the mission of appreciating my destination. The body found it hard to sleep and complained of heat, flies and difficulties digesting hotel meals. The mind meanwhile revealed a commitment to anxiety, boredom, free-floating sadness and financial alarm.
It seems that unlike the continuous, enduring contentment that we anticipate, our actual happiness with, and in, a place must be a