Berg

Ann Quin

A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father...

Idea and image juxtapositioned, spinning between myth and rationality, the odd years spent at a right angle; if I over-reach, can I be sure of reclaiming a formula outside habitual movement? How easy it would be to finally slide over, allowing the rest to absolve itself. But remember society owes you nothing, therefore, doing yourself in isn’t the answer, no reward for the resentment, and how would I know if it had proved freedom?

I take, I see, I subject my own mediocre self into something big.

Darkness, only darkness. I seem to have drifted into a chaos that can never be clarified, or even justified.

Dreaming once I became a star, waiting to disintegrate, gradually breaking apart, splash a rocket across the Milky Way. Always this paramount desire to use up the shell—can the shape of the body be the soul, what outward manifestation ever reveals our innermost feelings? Yet there’s enough truth in these steps I take, this cigarette I light, that leaf pressed between a crack in the pavement, and the woman I’ve just left in tears. But once attached then I begin questioning, making demands.

In a moment fixed between one wave and the next, the outline of what might be ahead.