Hidden Gymnastics Of The Non-Mind

Of all the books resting patiently unread on my shelves, this one has the most poignantly ironic title:



My Unwritten Books by George Steiner.


I saw that Rage-Boy on Mystic Bourgeousie has found it as well and also pulled up an excellent Steiner quote. I respectfully quote his excellent quoting.

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The quote is from an interview with Steiner on Australia's ABC Radio National. The interviewer reads a passage from the book: "I'm haunted to the point of panic by the fragility of reason." Asked what he means by that, Steiner replies...

As I come to the end of my life, there are four times as many registered astrologers in the United States as there are physicists and chemists. Four times as many. The wife of our sometime Prime Minister wears an amulet against "space rays." There is not a corner of our lives now that is not invented, invited, invaded by idiocy of irrational superstition, [such as] people who pay vast sums to have some fake Oriental arrange their furniture. Vast sums! The whole New Age -- this is a charlatan's age like never before. It makes the Middle Ages seem scientific in many ways. And all around me, in people I deeply respect, you scratch the surface and there is a frightened, profoundly superstitious person doing hidden gymnastics of the non-mind, in a way, trying to plan their fate, trying to escape from reality. And it frightens me a great deal, because reason is very fragile.

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Life is tenuous, reason is threatened and I'm feeling a tad fragile myself...

Someone suggested acupuncture for my feet... I had no hesitation is telling him what I thought of that idea.

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Quote for a later blog-post from After Dark by Haruki Murakami:

"Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?"

Not much value at all, I'd say.

E@L