In the Presence of Absence

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Austriancharts.at – Kansas – The Absence of Presence" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 30, 2020. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that isolation is a side effect of depression or su*cidal ideation. Isolation is an injurious thing. After all, what is not being known if not just another form of not existing at all? But as you look over your life now, like a mariner considering his own disappointment with the unfathomable secrets of the sea, you ask: Where is my port? You are uncertain how your heart returned safe and solid, like a quince still too hard to bite. Why did you cry, then, when the virgin by the tree was no longer a virgin because one of those who tame the wind had beaten you to her? And why did you cry again, when the second one did not open the door as you stood in the bitter cold shivering from humiliation, not from the cold that lit up your furnace? And why did you cry a third time when the third one departed without noticing that you were hugging a pillow, not a body of silk and ostrich feathers? Antoon’s translation puts a greater emphasis on re-creating rhythm: “It rises and falls, an echo of an echo of a sky stripped of the howling of steel. As if hearing water dripping from a leaky tap. Or listening to footsteps approaching the door, but never arriving.” Offiziellecharts.de – Kansas – The Absence of Presence" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved July 24, 2020.

To call a writer prolific can be to damn them with faint praise, but Simon Van Booy is without a doubt prolific — prolific, though, in the positive sense of being marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity.

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This is how fights start in high schools. There was no time for it when there was a case to investigate. a b c d "Interview with Zak Rizvi and Tom Brislin of Kansas - The Absence of Presence". May 19, 2020. Simon Van Booy electrifyingly combines story with parable....wise, witty and always breathtakingly beautiful.”— San Francisco Chronicle, Best Fiction of the Year

You are prepared also for a nocturnal reconnaissance of every sound coming to you from the star’s abode. So prolong this beginning, the beginning of love, so that imagination will submit to you as a horse to its rider. So that language will conquer you and you it, like a man and a woman racing to greet the unknown with the generosity of mutual obedience. Language is a map leading to a place not on the map,” announces a young writer lying in a hospital bed at the beginning of The Presence of Absence . As he contemplates his impending physical disappearance and the impact on his beloved wife, he realizes, “Life doesn’t start when you’re born . . . it begins when you commit yourself to the eventual devastating loss that results from connecting to another person.”

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Life doesn’t start when you’re born- it begins when you commit yourself to the eventual devastating loss that results from connecting to a person […] it’s in the eyes. That’s where you can tell. And.. by how- long after they’ve disappeared from your life- you somehow go on. Loving them.” One of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to create a luminous work that defies categorization. Not so much a review but some reflections. It very well may read like a glorified journal entry, so feel free to skip. As if electrocuted, you walk aimlessly, drifting with falling leaves. The storm and your emotions make you dizzy and you make them dizzy. You do not know if you are happy or sad, because the confusion you feel is the lightness of the earth and the victory of the heart over knowledge. You will later learn that love, your love, is only the beginning of love. In the beginning of love you are prepared, like a musical instrument, to compose according to the dictates of the air. Every breeze is a musical note and every silence a prayer of gratitude.