To this day, my best reading memory was spring break of my Junior year of high school when I read The Outsider by Richard Wright. Even though this novel is highly overshadowed by Native Son, considered by many to be Wright's masterpiece, it is one of the finest books I've ever read. The book has a long existentialist debate between two of the characters which I constantly think about because it reminds me of how frustrating it can be to find self-worth at times. Keeping with the sentiment I felt when starting this blog post, I decided to add an excerpt from it:
"Maybe man is nothing in particular,' Cross said gropingly. 'Maybe that's the terror of it. Man may be just anything at all. And maybe man deep down suspects this, really knows this, kind of dreams that it is true; but at the same time he does not want really to know it? May not human life on this earth be a kind of frozen fear of man at what he could possibly be? And every move he makes might not these moves be just to hide this awful fact? To twist it into something which he feels would make him rest and breathe a little easier? What man is is perhaps too much to be borne by man..."
Just like The Outsider is probably my favorite novel, Swedish maestro Tomas Tranströmer is one of the most satisfying poets out there. Fianlly winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011 after almost two decades in the ballot, the prolific poet deals with the natural world and the people who live in it from a perspective that adds a mystic quality to it. The wonder in his poetry is a constant that make us reconsider our place in this earth. I have included two of my favorite poems of Tranströmer's(translated by Robert Bly):
Under Pressure
The blue sky’s engine-drone is deafening.
We’re living here on a shuddering work-site
where the ocean depths can suddenly open up
shells and telephones hiss.
You can see beauty only from the side, hastily.
The dense grain on the field, many colours in a yellow stream.
The restless shadows in my head are drawn there.
They want to creep into the grain and turn to gold.
Darkness falls. At midnight I go to bed.
The smaller boat puts out from the larger boat.
You are alone on the water.
Society’s dark hull drifts further and further away.
Outskirts
Men in overalls the same color as earth rise from a ditch.
It's a transitional place, in stalemate, neither country nor city.
Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap,
but the clocks are against it.
Concrete piping scattered around laps at the light with cold tongues.
Auto-body shops occupy old barns.
Stones throw shadows as sharp as objects on the moon surface.
And these sites keep on getting bigger
like the land bought with Judas' silver: "a potter's field for
burying strangers."'
I wanted to end this post in a slightly happier mood, so I decided to include one of my favorite songs. Regardless of how I feel, this song(starting at 1:30) always serves as a beacon of sorts--remining me that there is an almost endless supply of new dawns:
Breathe in the night
That crusted tired sunrise
Born again the day
Brings young naivety
A laptop souvenir is worth the weight
In silver a golden son
You'll be home again
And I'll be home again
Mend in my sleep
I'm boxing under water
Waddle on the wake
Waking on the summer day (a summer day)
After all these years
Forget about all the troubled times
And after all these years
Forget about all the troubled times
And every father's pain
Casts a shadow over a broken son
You'll be whole again
And I'll be whole again
Munificent, artless and ascetic
Playing like a scared
Enthusiastic poodle
After all these years
Forget about all the troubled times
And after all these years
Forget about all the troubled times ( the troubled times )
All those years
I was hurting to feel
Something more than life
All those years
After all these years
Forget about all the troubled times
And after all these years
Forget about all the troubled times ( the troubled times )
All those years
I was hurting to feel
Something more than life
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