The Passage

"Movement without purpose, an endless ebb and flow, from one world to another, journeys and passages, undertaken by cocoons not for rest or solace, but for ephemerals. The flux of the sea now seemed the only pattern, within and beyond the mind -- mirrored even in his encounters with the myriad faces, on some of which he had tried to impose an order by seeing them as mirror-images, facets of his own self, but now that longing, for repose through the mastering of chaos, itself seemed vain. Perhaps it was true that he had first to banish all yearning, and learn to accept the drift, perhaps it was true that all was clouded by desire, as fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust, as a unborn babe by its covering."

This passage deserves to be quoted in its entirety, so I have included it in this post.

To begin discussing this excerpt, I think it is best to start with the first sentence. There is movement in our lives, but the overwhelming concern of this novel is to point out that the movement is not valuable in the sense that we normally assign to travel or translocation. The voice of this novel finds the movement to be a need that we have as rational beings in a chaotic existence. The only way to deal with the chaos is to find some way to experience short bursts of life with endings in plain sight. Ephemerality is the only avenue that will not wring out all of an individual's vitality. I find it fascinating to examine the narration in this excerpt. The point of view so often seemed to be Agastya's, but in this excerpt it is clear that the point of view is third person omniscient. The narration has a very interesting, and dismantling, effect on my perception of the world as presented in the novel. Because the narrating voice is not Agastya, it takes on a separate vantage at times. However, even those times when the narration is moving away from the mind of Agastya the overwhelming sense of dislocation remains intact. I always feel like a "cocoon" looking for "rest or solace," but never realizing anything outside of Agastya's thoughts. Moving back to the beautifully tragic excerpt, the sea is used to signify the only pattern one will find in life. Ebb and flow. Ebb and flow. Agastya attempts to use this pattern in comparing the people he meets to himself, but his self absorbed rationale is incapable of locating anything that resembles itself. The passage ends with the consideration of ridding oneself of all desire. If yearning can be extinguished, maybe then a kind of happiness can be forged. But maybe not...

I absolutely love this passage, and there are times when I believe an extinguishing of desires might lead to sense of contentment. However, I enjoy the chaotic existence that I revolve within...at times.