NEBULOSITY

Confusing. Figuring things out not by their form but by the convoluted trails of meaning formed by dense sentences, juxtaposing verses, and half-conscious dreams. This book is a forest of question marks. “I am no puzzle-maker, no wizard of chess, no physician of letters. I am only a p-poor, poor reader!” But the author lies silent. He has died. The pages are silent, but so full. And from its fullness, I am at once informed of the fact that life is hard, very hard, and that instead of shedding shy tears like a shameful dove on a solitary perch, I should simply continue with the task at hand.

Confusing entrails of people, flashes of faces painted with significance but fading out into the background as more words pour into the text. There are so many young women everywhere, scattered over the cities, pervading foregone dreams. I am waiting, impatiently, as a whining child awaits for a lollipop promised to him by an annoyed parent, for a distinct moment of understanding, of sweetness — for a perceivable height; a traceable theory; a conic structure of some sort; a clean tissue; something to lean on, like a rock; a climax of happiness, or of Dostoyevskian insanity. But there is only a desert with slow, sandy rise and falls that lead, for the sweating mountaineer dressed in a nylon ripspot jacket (me), to nowhere exactly.

Confusing like life, and life is confusing, simply because there is confusion in every starry puddle, every windowed painting, every overgrown garden.

Confusing. The blurb of this book describes the text as “surrealist”. I disagree. I argue (and now this is my attempt to sound like some fabulous, magnificent, distinguished lawyer in one of those glittering palatial rooms) that it is not surrealist, but “tyrannically, tremendously surrealist”. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury — on page .., and according to circumstantial evidence based on Melissa’s prior testimony, this is one magnificent example of ‘tyranny’, because these fleeting descriptions of momentary visions choke the brain-vessels of interpretation, causing the reader to fall unconscious to the floor. On page 50, the writing is ‘tremendous’, not only because it shakes the limbs of logic, BUT because it satisfies these two following absolute, inarguable components of tremendous writing: That it must be insane, and that it must be 1.11 readometers away from blowing up the human condition into atoms of dust. According to my scientific fellow Dr. Swift, these conditions have indeed occurred. Melissa’s right to poetic clarity (rule 1.11, book 11, listed in the Universal Declaration of Reader’s Rights) has therefore been breached in the aforementioned cases (the above paragraphs). You must trust me on this matter. You must put your trust in the hands of democracy. The author has even personally admitted to being guilty (recorded on page 23: “I shall discuss these things without pre-established order”). Case closed. The gavel bangs.

Confusing. Because in life, actually — in-in real life, no accusations can ever be made. Nothing is quantifiable. In fact, there is no glittering room at all, no universal declarations, and no limbs of logic. There is no Melissa either. There is only chaos, contradictions, and confusion. And sometimes, in a comet-like spasm of light, there is a particular object, person, or tale of honour that zaps through one’s haze of consciousness, and sets alight a purpose kindling, a source of significance springing in midair, and informs the perceiver that there is something, something indeed (wipe away your tears) — through all of that confusing mystery which we call the “essence of being”, which grasps the conscious heart and moves, moves the individual into life. I think that was Nadja’s role in this story. The elucidation of his intentions, furthermore, from pages 19-24, and around page 148, moved me, because they struck me as an ideology resonating with my own stance on literature. And so I shout: “Away with all rigid plots and stock characters! The writer is supposed to be king to their work, not subordinate to public expectations. The human condition has no pre-established order. Why should the writer ever be bound to such artificial premises?”

– – – Nadja is introduced on page 66. And suddenly the sunlight sheds its tears over the dark city, and illuminates these damp cobbled paths; the flowers raise their heads; the morning curtains are pulled open. This moment, this very moment, has the languorous, bleariness, violin-sounding intonation of a visual longing coming into reality, as a naked body emerges through dense mist and is polished by a river-stream of diamond-white light. Here, the whole world simply “happens”. Logic can not bring us here. There is a sense of the mystery being exposed; an intention growing; a desire being uncovered. A thing happens. Two things happen. The street roars with laughter. Flowers nod their head. People fall in love. But no matter what happens, or how many things happen, and how often they happen, the truth is that there is a nebulosity that is inescapable, a nebulosity that does not occur in particular moments, but is pervasive to reality as a whole, as an eternal and indeterminable entity of perception — and it is this substance of nebulosity that I think is central to Nadja.

Are you confused?