Whenever I walk into a bookstore or a library and take in the infinity of books lining the walls, I am overwhelmed by my own insufficiency. The image puts squarely in focus the thousands of thoughts and the millions of lines I have yet to read. There is not time enough. Reading things is a huge part of me. The ideas put forth - sometimes radical and iconoclastic, sometimes modest observations - cause me to question my assumptions and to think more deeply about myself and my opinions. e.g. Zamyatin pushed me to clarify my conception of liberty; Nietzsche to question the Apollonian category of thought foisted upon me from birth; sure even Faustus, rather violently, helped me to realise the virtue of concentrating on my goals (however sedentary they may be) instead of letting distractions soak up my time.
Reading has always been my chosen form of escapism, a haven from the trillion little bits of distracting noise that rain on me daily. I read because I can associate with fictional characters, characters that have helped guide and support me. I was tormented alongside Stephen Daedalus in a nationalistic and religious Ireland and I struggled with him to find a cultural identity. In Brussels, I found I could relate just as easily with the existential begaiements of Vladimir and Estragon; I struggled with Don Quijote de La Mancha to understand the many inconsistencies in our belief-systems and I suffered the absurdity of the human condition alongside Camus’ Mersault. I was always an outsider, too. In my childhood I was the one un-baptised heretic, my dual nationality two halves that mutually excluded one another. In Brussels I was always an ex-pat, even after I grew to think of it as my home. In my late teens I have been a foreigner, a Belgian, a European. (in the least angsty way you can read this) I have never belonged anywhere real. It’s not that the real world is bad, or that I don’t love a lot of people in it, it’s just that I’ve never seen myself as inhabiting a space of my own for enough time that I could ever make an impact in (and I'm almost certain I'd feel the same way even if I'd spent all my life in one place).
My mother once told me that I was born in the wrong era, and that resonated quite deeply with me. When I used to listen to punk rock music, I wished I could go back to the 70s and kick it with Sid vicious; when I read Austen I could just as well picture myself waltzing off into the sunset with Mr. Knightley. When I think about it though, it’s more than just living in the wrong era; when I read contemporary literature I still find myself placing Me in the environment of the characters I identify with and, hell, when I watch Gossip Girl I’m positive I belong in the Upper East Side. Actually, the realm I belong in is probably outside of the scope of time and space altogether so I can be unlimited by boring reality. Fictional, sure, but I’m not crazy, It’s not like I run off into my head because reality sucks, I mean I do have friends and family and fun. It’s just that I am an incorrigible romantic.
Today I read John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, because I’ll probably keep reading young adult fiction for as long as I can still read (whoever said Rowling and Pushkin don’t mix?), and one particular thing the protagonist thought (besides, like, a million actually deep things) was when she was on the phone to her boyfriend: "...even though I was in bed and he was in his basement, it really felt like we were back in that uncreated third space, which was a place I really liked visiting with him." It’s that uncreated third space that I belong in, I think. It makes me feel really weird and uncomfortable when someone else articulates something that I’ve always thought was my own personal revelation. I hate to be predictable but I guess that’s the rub of the human condition. No matter how deep your private discoveries seem to be, it is unlikely that you will ever have an original thought in your life. Which, obviously, makes the whole dream of doing something Great or Important sink away into oblivion. But I guess it’s comforting too, because it means that I’ll probably find someone who wants to share a bed with me in that third space. Most people want to Mean Something in this world, and even if like Shakespeare or Rachmaninoff, etc. you create a temporary legacy in your words or music or whatever it is still just that: temporary. Human existence, and memory, is temporary and you know, what are we quintessence of dust and all that? No matter how much we strive to achieve the infinite I am, it’s all bound for oblivion anyway.
I guess that’s why the uncreated third space is my chosen home. I’m still living my day to day life in the real world like a normal human being, realistic and unencumbered by impossible dreams, but when I want to go to my mind palace it’s there for me. There indeed there will be time place, and meaning enough for me. So let us go then, you and I?
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