Dreams and Stones by Magdalena Tulli

Author:Magdalena Tulli [Tulli, Magdalena]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: nepalifiction, TPB
ISBN: 9781935744375
Publisher: Archipelago
Published: 2004-04-30T18:15:00+00:00

THIS CITY WAS BUILT AT THE MEETING POINT OF THREE ELEMENTS in a place where they mingled with one another. It was constructed on the clay of memories, on the sands of dreams and on the ground waters of oblivion, cold and black, whose flow never ceases for a moment, washing away the foundations day after day. In their swirling depths the coins of distinctions vanish. The sunken coins apparently have power over oblivion; lying on the bottom, they preserve the memory of events and places. But it is not known how they can protect, since they themselves perish in the miry ooze beneath which obverse and reverse look the same. There the stillness of waking hours does not prevent the agitation of dreams, or vice versa. The waters of oblivion are not ruled by any rational principle and for this reason they reconcile all inconsistencies.

Differentiations! Life and death, tree and machine, beginning and end! Every name like a coin has its obverse and reverse. When paying with a coin it is not possible to spend half of it, keeping either the heads or the tails for oneself. All that is large is small and vice versa. Ambiguity is a consequence of calling things by their names. Every name teeters on a knife edge, in desperation, and makes differentiations necessary. Every adjective that is juxtaposed with it will bring along a counteradjective, every conjecture a counterconjecture. good will create evil, warmth will create cold, end will create beginning. Whoever maintains that the world resembles a tree is the enemy and brother of him who insists that it resembles a machine. Both know what a tree is and what a machine is. In attempting to touch the essence of things they keep using the same names as if they were arguing about some precious plunder, torn apart by the desire to keep the whole lot but in agreement about the amount and the name of the currency; at the same time they will hear nothing about counterfeit banknotes. But whoever describes the city in a hundred thousand words will nourish a hundred thousand words of the countercity and each of them will return to the city like a bad penny.

No one asks where nouns come from or who they belong to. The inhabitants of the city carry them with complete confidence, just as in its beginning they carried bricks, convinced that they were laboring for themselves and their children and that whoever bears the burden is its owner. At one time they cheered as records were beaten on scaffolding and believed that the hand lifts the brick, not the opposite. They have always yielded easily to illusions. In their own opinion they are the masters of words, yet words do not obey them. They do not stick to objects; they suddenly change meaning or disappear, replaced by other words. They move, now here now there, dragging thoughts, questions and desires behind them.

Though people here burden themselves with anything the eye can see, they have no possessions.

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