24 September 2009

meaning is a shaky edifice


"But human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death."
--Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands

Found notes from a recent Saturday morning yard sale––I cannot help but get wrapped up in the romance of an old soul's lost ephemera. Forever, I will be a collector...watch Jessica Helfand discuss the hatred and histories and beauty of the scrapbook here.

2 comments:

tyler said...

wow - that is an *amazing* quote. I'm going to pin that up somewhere!

nancynago said...

But this only acknowledges or addresses the past, all in a past tense, what about present and future?