At times, a writer's role can legitimately be to explore extrema that one would never, ever, want to go near in practice. Lately RantWoman has also been reflecting on teams at the Friendly Neighborhood Center ... who, when things are going well, should be able to borrow each other's body parts. For instance, RantWoman might need to borrow someone's eyes. Or someone else might need to borrow RantWoman's arms and legs and tall stature.
If one is going to acknowledge the point of not necessarily wanting to go near a topic, what obligations does that place on one about treatment of people who actually do deal with the situation? On the other hand, if one is going to torture an offensive metaphor all over pages and pages of literary pretension, one ought at least to have a handle on the metaphor one is attempting to stitch to one's theme. Right?
To that end, the only haiku RantWoman has ever penned in Spanish and likely the only one she ever will.
Por la ceguera / A Borges le faltaba /el amarillo
We will come back to Borges and the color yellow after more haiku excursions:
RantWoman sent this effort off to a Spanish linguist friend. He immediately sent back an effort which would have about a zillion too many syllables if one pronounced the spelling in pompous gringo style but would be about right if one swallowed all the syllables as most casual speakers would. Then RantWoman heard another more studied practitioner of haiku say that really the point is a poem in a breath and the syllable count in Japanese might be different than in English. RantWoman does not know what to make of these deviations. RantWoman is not a studied poet. Haiku is about the only form she can remember but she does, horrors, permit herself multiple stanzas. In other words, aside from whatever metaphors one is messing around with, there is that pesky question of form to come and go as well.
But back to metaphors, gradations of conditions, and multiple worlds within the same space of language. RantWoman is highly amused by another blogger's literary evisceration of Jose Saramago's Essay on Blindness. RantWoman admits that this work and the film based on it have been on her "must miss" list for awhile based solely on the fulminations about them on the email list run by the local chapter of a blindness-related group to which RantWoman belongs. Well Spanish Linguist friend said more or less the same things as the list but in vernacular he and RantWoman use all the time on the phone but probably would refrain from on the internet. However, RantWoman found the other blogger's language absolutely delightful, concise and to the point.
Today, though something in the to the point part about people's needs makes RantWoman wonder if just possibly the metaphor really is a metaphor after all. By all accounts Saramago does not know anything about blindness. In fact, if one is using tortured metaphors, sometimes too many facts just get in the way of the metaphor. RantWoman is certainly blundering ahead unencumbered by any contact with the text here, but who on the planet who is reasonably conscious has never felt like they are the only person ever to achieve some sublime realization to which all others around them are indeed blind but desparately in need?
Add to this the juxtaposition in the original post of Saramago's needy messes and a hapless healthcare practitioner who somehow assumed a blind patient would need something more than all the other people who let him stick hands, sharp instruments, and other topical paraphrenalia into their mouths. Could Saramago be making bad assumptions about what is needed and then using that as an excuse to cower in fear while simultaneously arrogantly proclaiming his vision?
Here we come to another different essay about blindness.
Here we get to gradations and themes and the exact framework upon which one is hanging one's metaphors. RantWoman in college was kind of an academic dilettante. One aspect of this was her literary tour of several highly divergent forms of spoken Spanish as delivered in the literature classes RantWoman kept taking despite there not being obvious link with her major or her other activities.
RantWoman does remember reading a story by Mexican writer Jorge Luis Borges and also remembers hearing then that Borges eventually went blind due to some rare genetic disorder. Such is the nature of collegiate dilettantism though that RantWoman did not think more about that until a couple years ago when someone RantWoman met at one of her efforts to network her way to sanity sent her a copy of Borges essay La Ceguera.
True confession: RantWoman skimmed with bad eyes, did not look up all the words she did not know and did not even make it to the end. Now the document is frozen in electronic purgatory on a computer RantWoman no longer uses and if RantWoman needs to poke at the topic more, she will have to find another way to do so. To say the least RantWoman is concious that she may have missed colossally important major points.
What RantWoman read she really enjoyed. The essay is long and pompous and by turns literary and reflective and grateful. Borges talks about his work as the head of the Bibilioteca Nacional and other points of his career. He talks of literature and who knows what all. Somewhere in the part RantWoman read, he talked about how one of the things he missed most was the color yellow.
RantWoman has never been a giant fan of the color yellow, for one thing because she historically has only appreciated it at all in its most intense bright forms. RantWoman is also aware of the themes of skin tone and apparel and RantWoman if dressed in yellow tends more to look like she has liver trouble than like something fashionable. In other words, the very fact that yellow would be that precious to anyone is an insight that might as well be from outer space.
RantWoman thinks there is a high probability that she would think Saramago's text just as masturbatory as the other blogger does, but for some reason she could maybe possibly consider budging the title off her must-miss list. Well RantWoman could consider this, but don't count on it.
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