Memory & Dream by Charles de Lint

Author:Charles de Lint
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-02-05T15:32:42+00:00

journal entries

Everything’s got to be someplace.

—Anonymous

Sometimes I wonder if everything is already known and each of us simply selects the facts that work for us. Is that why we all go through life so disconnected from one another? Not only are our minds these singular islands, each separate from the other, but we’re not even necessarily operating in the same reality. There’s a consensual no-man’s-land that we pretty well agree on, but beyond those basic reference points that we’re given as children, we’re on our own. We run into trouble communicating, not because we lack a common language, but because the facts I’ve selected don’t usually fit with the ones you have. Lacking common ground, it’s no wonder we find it so hard to communicate.

Take art, whether it’s visual, music, dance, writing, whatever. Art is one of the things that’s supposed to break down the boundaries between us and give us some common ground so that the lines of communication can stay open. But the best art, the art that really works, is also supposed to be open to individual interpretations. No one wants specifics in art except for academics. No one wants their work put into a box that says it means this, and only this. So we go floundering through galleries and books and theatre presentations, taking what we can, always looking over somebody else’s shoulder to compare it to what they got, readjusting our own interpretations, until somewhere in the process we end up having processed entirely different experiences from the same source material. Which is okay, except that when we talk about it, we still think we’re referring to the same thing.

No one really knows what you’re thinking, it’s that simple. They can guess the reasons behind what you’re doing, but they can’t know. And how can we expect them to when we ourselves don’t even know the reasons behind the things we do.

I mean, I know why I took Paddyjack from the farmhouse—to save it from the fire. What I don’t know is why I kept it. Why I never told Izzy that I had it. I think it might be because she went so strange afterwards, turning her back on her gift and the numena the way she did. She went so distant.

Understandable, I guess, considering all she’d been through, but still ... I think I was afraid that she would do something to it herself—sell it, perhaps, or worse, deliver it to Rushkin. And then there were those people who said—never to her face, mind you, but word gets around—that she’d started the fire herself.

I know that’s a terrible thing to even consider, but while she saw Rushkin on the island, he had that proof that he was in New York City at the time. I believed Izzy. I really did. I really tried to. But I couldn’t silence that stupid little uncertainty sitting in the back of my head that kept asking, What if I gave her the painting back and then she did destroy it? Paddyjack’s not just some painting she did.

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