Reading in the park (Text 67)

Often enough the surface and illusion catch me, their prey, and I feel like a man.  Then I’m happy to be in the world…….  On these days I’m particularly fond of gardens.

Trees grow, but there are benches beneath the shade.  On the broad walkways facing the four sides of the city, the benches are larger and are almost always occupied.

When I forget, I become a normal man, reserved for some purpose, and I brush down another suit and read the newspaper from front to back. 

But the illusion never lasts long, partly because it doesn’t last and partly because night arrives.  And the colours of the flowers, the shade of the trees, the geometry of the streets and flower beds– it all fades and shrinks………..

Camus and Soares

While Bernardo Soares continually reevaluates his relationship with his writing through his writing, and in turn his relation with life, what’s important is not any final conclusion but the suggestion of it being an ongoing process where the continual evolution of the writing is what contains the benefit.

Consider his thoughts of those living, as Thoreau would put it, the unexamined life:

"They go on their way with all the manners and gestures that define consciousness, and they’re conscious of nothing, for they’re not conscious of being conscious.  Whether clever or stupid, they’re all equally stupid (Sec. 70)."

While Thoreau can be a bit more polite, Soares’ thoughts, even if jaded for that particular moment in the hour of that specific day, are undoubtedly clear– one must develop an active awareness of one’s consciousness to avoid being ‘stupid’.  And it’s the writing which allows Soares to personally accomplish this.  But because its evidenced that he finds both pratfalls and glories equally in his writing, even simultaneously, but continues anyway, he demonstrates an acceptance to the daily tedium of life.

This reminds me a lot of certain ideas expressed by Albert Camus.  Consider the ending of his famous The Myth of Sisyphus essay, where he concludes, despite Sisyphus’ condemnation to an eternal pushing of a stone up a mountain, the “struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”  And compare this with Soares’ own words at the end of Sec. 72, “and the solace of being able to imagine myself happy.”

In both Camus and Soares, there is an acknowledgment that a final ‘happiness’ is not an end destination, but instead, gained from an empowerment found in choice and will, a personal determination placed upon life’s otherwise tedious circumstances, that does not contain a forever
achievement, but is an active and ongoing process that can only be fueled by the direct action of the individual.