Seasick on Dry Land, but not Joylessly So

Why should we want to be untouched, unmarred, unhurt?

. . .except for the obvious, that hurting hurts. . .

But other than the obvious, why else?  No else.  

As Yeats–his Crazy Jane, actually–puts it, “nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.”

Them there paradoxes, a paradox box, the only kind of thing that seems–to me–to explain life.

if it may be explained at all.  far far better minds than mine (fifty-three times better, in fact) say no.  Beckett and Kafka say no.  or not exactly.  in a little light reading last night I ran across a quote of Kafka’s describing a feeling of being seasick on dry land.  so heartbreaking–that almost-graspable but utterly-ungraspable sensation of something being wrong in a way that doesn’t make sense–what more can be said?

and yet we sometimes still want to be here, even so, and even sparkle a little sometimes, beyond all logic or reasonableness.

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Tags: joy, yeats, kafka, beckett, hurt

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