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Man's Wobbly Little Mind Isn't Equipped For Hauling Around The Great Unknowns. Very Few People Realize, There's No Point Chasing After Answers To Life's Important Questions. They All Have Fickle, Highly Whimsical Minds Of Their Own. Nevertheless. If You're Patient, If You Don't Rush Them, When They're Ready, They'll Smash Into You. And Don't Be Surprised If Afterward You're Speechless And There Are Cartoon Tweety Birds Chirping Around Your Head. (gareth Van Meer)

-Marisha Pessl

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Man's Wobbly Little Mind

Marisha Pessl

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Man's Wobbly Little Mind Isn't Equipped For Hauling Around The Great Unknowns. Very Few People Realize, There's No Point Chasing After Answers To Life's Important Questions. They All Have Fickle, Highly Whimsical Minds Of Their Own. Nevertheless. If You're Patient, If You Don't Rush Them, When They're Ready, They'll Smash Into You. And Don't Be Surprised If Afterward You're Speechless And There Are Cartoon Tweety Birds Chirping Around Your Head. (gareth Van Meer)

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The Late Great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British Essayist, Lecturer, Satirist, And Social Observer, Wrote In His Autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), "when One Travels Abroad, One Doesn't So Much Discover The Hidden Wonders Of The World, But The Hidden Wonders Of The Individuals With Whom One Is Traveling. They May Turn Out To Afford A Stirring View, A Rather Dull Landscape, Or A Terrain So Treacherous One Finds It's Best To Forget The Entire Affair And Return Home.

It's Funny How The Night That Changes Your Life Forever Starts Out Like All The Others.

Changing Your Life

Because Every One Of Us Has Our Box, A Dark Chamber Stowing The Thing That Lanced Our Heart. It Contains What You Do Everything For, Strive For, Wound Everything Around You.

Well, Life Isn't A Cakewalk, Is It?! Eighty-nine Percent Of The World's Most Valuable Art Was Created By Men Living In Rat-infested Flats. You Think Velásquez Wore Adidas? You Think He Enjoyed The Luxuries Of Central Heating And Twenty-four-hour Pizza Delivery?!

I Haven't Always Been A Writer And I Suppose I Tiptoed Around The Idea Of Writing Full Time, Because It's So Isolating.

Most People Ended Up, After Only A Couple Of Months, So Far Away From Where They'd Intended To Go, Stuck In Some Barbed Underbrush Of A Quagmire When They'd Meant To Head Straight To The Ocean.

What, Really, Was The Difference Between Something Hounding You And Something Leading You Somewhere?

It Was As If Hannah Had Sprung A Leak And Her Character, Usually So Meticulous And Contained, Was Spilling All Over The Place.

Justice Wields An Erratic Sword, Grants Mercy To Fortunate Few. Yet If Man Doesn't Fight For Her, 'tis Chaos He's Left To.

Making Love To Aurelia Was Like Rummaging Through A Card Catalog In A Deserted Library, Searching For One Very Obscure, Little-read Entry On Hungarian Poetry.

Within Every Elaborate Lie, A Kernel Of Truth.

May You Walk A Lighted Path. May You Fight For Truth - Your Truth, Not Someone Else's - And May You Understand, Above All Things, That You Are The Most Important Concept, Theory, And Philosophy I Have Ever Known.

It's A Common Feeling For People To Feel Intermittent Antipathy Toward Individuals They're Familiar With.

What You Tend To Find In The Personal Lives Of Brilliant Men Is Devastation Akin To A Nuclear Bomb Going Off.

I Was Aware Too How Strange Adults Were, How Theirs Lives Were Vaster Than They Wanted Anyone To Realize, That They Actually Stretched On And On Like Deserts, Dry And Desolate, With An Unpredictable, Shifting Sea Of Dunes.

In College I Studied '60s And '70s Radicalism, Student Activism, Forms Of Political Violence, Groups Like The Weathermen, The Black Panthers, The Symbionese Liberation Army, The New Left.

God, The Boring Relative Everyone Ignores--no One Calls, No One Writes--until They Need A Serious Favor.

I Hate To Think Of A Day Where A Compelling Book Or A Compelling Authorial Voice Would Be Lost Simply Because That Person Doesn't Have A Web Site. But I Think That, To Use The Internet In A Positive Way, To Turn People On To Reading, Is Something That Authors Shouldn't Really Shy Away From Necessarily.

Show Me What A Man Hates And I'll Show You What He Is.

Just When You Think You've Hit Rock Bottom, You Realize You're Standing On Another Trapdoor.

It’s What We Chase But Never Find. It Is The Mystery Of Our Lives, The Understanding That Even When We Have Everything We Want It Is One Day To Leave Us. It’s The Something Unseen, The Lurking Devastation, The Darkness That Gives Our Lives Dimension.

Freak The Ferocious Out.

Like That Lightning That Comes Out Of The Blue When There's Not Even A Storm Going On, Just A Crazy Crack In The Sky. With Something Like That Right In Front Of You, You Can't Help But Feel There's New Possibilities Out There.

Look At Picasso. O’neill. Tennessee Williams. Capote. Were These Shiny Happy People Spreading Sunshine? No. Only The Greatest Of Personal Demons Can Force You To Do Powerful Work.

Life Had Been A Suit I'd Only Put On For Special Occasions. Most Of The Time I Kept It In The Back Of My Closet, Forgetting It Was There. We Were Meant To Die When It Was Barely Stitched Anymore, When The Elbows And Knees Were Stained With Grass And Mud, Shoulder Pads Uneven From People Hugging You All The Time, Downpours And Blistering Sun, The Fabric Faded, Buttons Gone.

You Journalists Bulldoze Life's Mysteries, Ignorant Of What You're So Ruthlessly Turning Up.

Dad Always Warned That It Was Misleading When One Imagined People, When One Sas Them In The Mind's Eye, Because One Never Remembered Them As They Really Were, With As Many Inconsistencies As There Were Hairs On A Human Head (100,000 To 200,000). Instead, The Mind Used A Lazy Shorthand, Smoothed The Person Over Into Their Most Dominating Characteristic--their Pessimism Or Insecurity (something Really Being Lazy, Turning Them Into Either Nice Or Mean)--and One Made The Mistake Of Judging Them From This Basis Alone And Risked, On A Subsequent Encounter, Being Dangerously Surprised.

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We're Living Longer, We Social Network Alone With Our Screens, And Our Depth Of Feeling Gets Shallower. Soon It'll Be Nothing But A Tide Pool, Then A Thimble Of Water, Then A Micro Drop.

Some People, Every Now And Then, Simply Had To Have One Too Many, Go Drifty Voiced And Slouch Mouthed, Swimming Willfully Around In Their Own Sadness As If It Were Hot Springs.

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