I�m reading Isak Denison�s first novel, �Seven Gothic Tales,� right now, one of a few books to adorn my nightstand these last days, as a matter of fact. Isak Denisen is actually the pseudonym of Karen Blixen, author of �Out of Africa�. I picked up the book, not having read or seen the movie she�s known for, but because in her bio, it mentions that after she and her husband divorced in 1921, she continued to run their coffee plantation in British East Africa. Interesting so far, right? Then, the coffee market temporarily collapsed, and she moved back to her homeland of Denmark, where she began writing.

I love classic English writing. Eloquent and poetic, its ruthless reality sugar-coated with beautiful, flowing words, making it so tasty to take in. The reason I bring this up, though, is because halfway into the third tale, �Miss Denison� randomly inserted a philosophical paragraph, more like a sinewy string than a tangent holding it in place. It doesn�t quite go with the story, and yet it takes you away from the plot just long enough to ponder a great possibility before the paragraph ends, and the next one doesn�t even allude to it. A passing fancy, perhaps? Who knows. But, since this is a concept (more like a �truth�) I love and think about often, to stumble upon it so unwittingly, for me, was like finding treasure buried in your own toy box. The idea? Life and change. So, enough of a lead-in, here�s the passage I�m so dying to share:

At this point in the story, the character is taking a ride through the country, and he �fell to meditating upon the subject of change.�

�The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast, and are up against a force majeure. Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one mood, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting. It is all wrong, he thought, to imagine paradise as a never-changing state of bliss. It will probably, on the contrary, turn out to be, in the true spirit of God, an incessant up and down, a whirlpool of change. Only you may yourself, by that time, have become one with God, and have taken to liking it. He thought with deep sadness of all the young men who had been, through the ages, perfect in beauty and vigor � young pharaohs with clean-cut faces hunting in chariots along the Nile, young Chinese sages, silk-clad, reading within the live shade of willows � who had been changed, against their wishes, into supporters of society, fathers-in-law, authorities on food and morals. All this was sad.�

And that�s it! In the next paragraph, the character arrives at his destination and the story carries on without the slightest glance back to this meditation. I fucking love it. I suggest you read that passage at least three times. How often have I wanted a moment to last forever? But, what this character may realize, is that if a moment did last forever, we steal from ourselves the possibility, the opportunity, the privilege, to have millions of DIFFERENT moments. I need to stop here, because I�m thinking in so many directions, I might pop a vessel in my forehead or something. Think about it. Life = Change.

-Barbarella

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