All entries for Tuesday 20 November 2007

The Key

What does a post card want to say to you? On what conditions is it possible? Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are. At the very instant when from its address it interpellates, you, uniquely you, instead of reaching you it divides you or sets you aside, occasionally overlooks you. And you love and you do not love, it makes of you what you wish, it takes you, it leaves you, it gives you.
Jacques Derrida Post Card

Long ago I told my students that I felt writing a blog is like writing a post card without an addressee. My text travels, and I locked up the meaning with my words. It frightens me suddenly as I logged into my long deserted blog today, that if the only key is my memory, what would happen if I lost it? Would I become a stranger to myself? Or rather would the place become a wasteland, not Eliot’s wasteland, but no man’s land of growing weeds?
Reading Sartre’s Why Write this week. Struggling to convince myself that he must be right: it is a commitment to freedom that we write; and then the amnesia becomes an ultimate blessing, for it sets the writer free.

Xiu Wang : 20 Nov 2007 01:09 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem