The beauty of the husband: a fictional essay in 29 tangos
By Anne Carson: page 89
In the effort to find one's way among the contents of memory (Aristotle emphasizes) a principal of association is helpful— "passing rapidly from one step to the next. For instance from milk to white, from white to air, from air to damp, after which one recollectes autumn supposing one is trying to recollect that season." Or supposing, fair reader, you are trying to recollect not autumn but freedom, a principal of freedom the existed between two people, small and savage as principals go—but what are the rules for this? As he says, folly may come into fashion. Pass then rapidly from one step to the next, for instance from nipple to hard, from hard to hotel room, from hotel room to a phrase found in a letter he wrote in a taxi one day he passed his wife walking on the other side of the street and she did not see him, she was— so ingenious are the arrangements of the state of flux we call our moral history are they not almost as neat as mathematical propositions except written on water— on her way to the courthouse to file papers for divorce, a phrase like how you tasted between your legs. After which by means of this wholly divine faculty, the "memory of words and things," one recollects freedom. Is it I? cries the soul rushing up. Little soul, poor vague animal: beware this invention "always useful for learning and life" as Aristotle say, Aristotle who had no husband, rarely mentions beauty and was likely to pass rapidly from wrist to slave when trying to recollect wife.
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