at last you, will say (maybe without speaking) (there are mountains inside your skull garden and chaos, ocean and hurricane; certain corners of rooms, portraits of great-grandmothers, curtains of a particular shade; your deserts; your private dinosaurs; the first woman) all i need to know: tell me everything just as it was from the beginning.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complexity of our inner thoughts and experiences, urging a desire for complete understanding of oneself and one's past.
Margaret Atwood's quote dives into the intricate landscape of our minds, filled with memories, emotions, and the remnants of our history. It suggests that each person hosts an entire world of experiences – from the chaos of intense feelings to the quiet reflections of memories that shape who we are. The yearning for a thorough understanding of these inner landscapes highlights our desire for self-awareness and clarity about our personal narratives.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth and understanding.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.
I'd rather there wasn't an afterlife, really. I'd much rather not be me for thousands of years.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances.
In True Meditation, we're in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to the transcendence of form is through form itself.
Christ is the Word of God. It is not in certain texts written in the New Testament, valuable as they are; it is not in certain words which Jesus spoke, vast as is their preciousness; it is in the Word, which Jesus is, that the great manifestation of God is made.
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