VIII

Remember that although he does not know it, in spite of all his apparent oblivion and neglect, if you fail , his universe crumbles ”⁠ ⁠… men live their childish ignorant lives on a foundation of pain and exhaustion. Down in the fevered life of pain and exhaustion there is a deep certainty. There is no deep certainty in the lives of men. If there were they would not be forever talking with conceited guilty lips as if something were waiting if they stopped, to spring on them from behind.⁠ ⁠… The evolution of the Idea of God.⁠ ⁠… I have forgotten what that is about⁠ ⁠… a picture of a sort of Madonna⁠ ⁠… corn goddess, with a child and sheaves of corn.⁠ ⁠… The Mechanism of Thought .⁠ ⁠… Thirty Sane Criticisms .⁠ ⁠… Critique de la Pensée Moderne; traduit par H. Navray, Mercure de France .⁠ ⁠… How did he begin? Where was he when he came out and began saying everybody was wrong? How did he get to know about it all? She took down a volume unwillingly⁠ ⁠… there was something being lost, something waiting within the quiet air of the room that would be gone if she read. It was not too late. Why did men write books? Modern men? The book was open. Her eyes scanned unwillingly. Fabric. How did he find his words. No one had ever said fabric about anything. It made the page alive⁠ ⁠… a woven carpet, on one side a beautiful glowing pattern, on the other dull stringy harshness⁠ ⁠… there is a dangerous looseness ⁠ ⁠… her heart began beating apprehensively. The room was dead about her. She sat down tense, and read the sentence through. There is a dangerous looseness in the fabric of our minds. She imagined the words spoken, looseness was ugly, making the mouth ugly in speech. There is a looseness in the fabric of our minds. That is what he would have said in conversation, looking nowhere and waiting to floor an objection. There is a dangerous, he had written. That introduced another idea. You were not supposed to notice that there were two statements, but to read smoothly on, accepting. It was deliberate. Put in deliberately to frighten you into reading more. Dangerous. The adjective in the sentence, personal, a matter of opinion. People who read the books do not think about adjectives . They like them. Conversation is adjectives !⁠ ⁠… all the worry of conversation is because people use adjectives and rush on.⁠ ⁠…