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replied to Trevor Burrows's status

Many of Agnes's most interesting passages have to do with the identity of things and the relationship between one thing and another --- it's fuzzy, but I would characterize them as concerned with issues of translation and commensurability. Hinting at the limits of language, but not only language.

We get this in the very first passage:

"You cannot cut an apple with an apple. You cannot cut an orange with an orange. You can, if you have a knife, cut an apple or an orange. Or slice open the underbelly of a fish. Or, if your hands are steady enough and the blade is sharp enough, sever an umbilical cord." (3)

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replied to Trevor Burrows's status

Here, Agnes considers this bundle of themes more directly:

"Fourteen years have passed since then. Soon I will be many decades removed from Fabienne. But years and decades are mere words, made-up names for units of measurement. One pound of potato, two cups of flour, three oranges, but what is the measuring unit for hunger?" (18)

What is the measuring unit for hunger --- fantastic!

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replied to Trevor Burrows's status

Another koan-esque observation moves from a matter-of-fact acceptance of mortality to :

"The journalists and critics, mindless people, refused to see that the distance between life and death was always shorter than people are willing to understand. One step further, one breath skipped -- it does not take much to slip from life into death.

From life to life? That is a long way. The cousins of my geese, the wild ones, fly over a continent. People leave their homes for new homes, new cities, new countries. But who can shorten the distance between two people so they can say with confidence that they have reached each other?" (53)

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