"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves." Ludwig Wittgenstein

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Sunnyside Up

How could language, any human language, capture the overwhelming complexity of reality, especially inner subjective reality? How could a writer ever hope to describe what it feels like to be a human being, any human being? Buck snapped two eggs against the frying pan’s side, lifted their damaged domes above the skillet and watched as the yokes and albumin dripped to the sizzling surface, below. It was impossible for a writer, even the very best, to accurately describe experience, to ‘get at’ all its messy, sticky, slimy, prickly detail.

Just then, when Buck accidentally brushed his left hand against the side of the burning skillet, he bellowed an injured, ear-splitting expletive, and felt the burn, like a rising flood of mind-numbing stupidity, radiate outward from his red, fried knuckle. He immediately abandoned all thoughts of language’s inadequacy, settling instead, for the pure ineffable burn of raw experience…sunny side up.

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