After being possessed and overcome by the Devil I lost access
to my own thoughts. This meant that in order to recover them
I had to ask question after question of strangers, which for the
most part they couldn’t answer. When someone felt he or she
could answer, I took careful note of what was said and how it
was said, and made a point to request an account of its origin and
development. In this way, over many months and years, I was
slowly able to regain access to my mental life, even translating
it into propositions for public or private use. But problems soon
arose when my intentions proved too elusive for my means to
convey them, which resulted in unexpected deflections and dis-
tortions, and turned my ideas into twigs. Despite this I have
something to tell you. What for so long you and I have observed
together, day in and day out, has been constantly modified by
what we don’t see, leaving one whole side of experience blank.
And now that we’ve grown old, we lack energy to work out
what these dark lanes or vacant areas impart to us. Although the
intellect takes pleasure in exercising itself according to the five-
fold method—listening, reading, grasping, remembering, forget-
ting—there are some tasks that make it bristle. I hereby repre-
sent myself to you as the residue of things that aren’t true. Or
can these even be distinguished? Whose face shades the differ-
ence? Whose memory stores it?
from PlaytimeFind more by William Fuller at the library
Copyright © 2015 William Fuller
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.