You Shall Know Our Velocity

"Not the first world," says Annette, "the world we are from, not the second or third world, so many people treading water. This is different. The fourth world is voluntary. It is quick, small steps from the other worlds ... Everyone is sleeping and we are here, in the sea. That is the fourth world. The fourth world is present and available. It's this close."

- You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers.

After watching Where the Wild Things Are and Away We Go, I'm reading the screenwriters' first works - his novel and autobiography. I love it. I haven't been MOVED by writing - the act of or reading - for so long, the air around me felt thin for it. Now I can feel it. That irrational, urgent desire to scribble until you kick up gold from the dust. I'm envious of Dave Eggers (though according to the Salon.com articles I've been reading, this is hardly a unique response) - he's fearless to the point of egoistic. It reminds me of Jack Kerouac's philosophy of writing - don't look back, assume everything you write is inspired.

Though Haruki Murakami sees it differently. As a steady whittling, carving a work of art by your will, your patience, by sheer stubborness alone. Elemental forces as the wind on a cliff face. He compared it to marathon running, quoting a famous Japanese marathon runner who said:

Pain is necessary. Suffering is optional.

Just my thoughts of the day. And that passage from You Shall Know Our Velocity. Is it just a spoilt, second-gen immigrant way of feeling? That you are free - free, that is, in the sense that you reject traditional 'treading water' ways of being so you can be instead a volunteer periphery dweller. At best, the latter day equivalent of a Taoist immortal hermit, living in the Wu-Tang mountains. At worst, a huge cock-up of life's opportunities deliberately missed.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind.