Allen's Text 64 - part 2

copyright2006 - Allen Sutterfield

In twenty years he had read through the whole lot innumerable times, some parts perhaps a thousand tomes. Yet, when he finally gave all of them over to Alfred and Marcia, he knew then as one work, despite their randomness, their beguiling impenetrabilities. His brilliant memory gave him exact recall of the myriad incidents recorded there, and he could quote whole passages of words qua words. He was however unable to finally determine which of the two incidents or words—was the primary focus of the jumbled mass.

“The only way I could possibly do it, is to have ALL the pages, notebooks, journals, scrapbooks out and visible at one time, in one big room—Scrooge in his money bins—and even then, to have several years, or say an INDEFINITE TIME PERIOD available, and other needs (if not WANTS) taken care of who knows how, leaving me full time for concentration: then, with that only as my life, my work could be written. It will never happen. It could only happen in a novel, a bad novel at that, and sothat work will not, con not be written. Even if “LIFE” provided all the externals, ”LIFE” can do nothing about the internal quirks and quarks. But simply because it cannot be written by me does not mean it does not exist. Great books always happen like this, they are impossible for decades, for scores of years, dreamed of and began and abandoned by writer after writer—then suddenly, someone LIVES THE DREAM BY WRITING IT and the work of genius appears, with no one the wiser as to how such works “come into existence."

For the true artist, the genius, does, in himself, satisfy exactly the conditions I ask for above, fatedly as it were, to the extremities of asylum, deformities, cork-lined rooms, blindness and the overdeveloped ear: not from posturing or petty defiance but because the work requires it, since the work is what is being lived, and not the life of the artist. Others live that. You, me, others. In my case I am close enough to it to it SOME MOMENTS. That is how I know. But I do not live it enough, and so I am taunted and haunted by the existence of the Work, shy of its fulfillment. Yes the Work has taken leave of me, its possible fulfillment through me THIS LIFE has been abandoned, and the Work can do this, for it has eternity, not time, on its side. I m left to be the butt of its great laughter.”

There appeared to be mountains below the mandala but stiched with white flowers, as though their lines were in fact seams in the visible world. Another time they looked like the roof lines of mountain temples, but in either case they were stitches. the three “items” in the center, directly beneath the mandala, Arthur never did decifer. The mandala itself, on this background, was framed, first in flowered darkwood, then in scrolled in goldenwood. Beyond this was the narrow border of the journal cover itself, in appropriate dark flowered brown, with a final red edge—the spine. The edges had been worn away all round, giving a certain quality as the final effect.

On the inside cover, in Winter’s hand: “Address for this volume: P.K. 180, Gaziantep, Turkey.”