a novel about isolation, with or without loneliness, and how personal history/memory affects present endeavors
truth about human interaction (or “why i prefer to keep to myself”):
“People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.” p. 73
communication breakdown (or “why i prefer to talk to myself”):
“But I was not quite with him in my thoughts, and I wonder whether that is how we get to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking out loud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversation we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see, and when you live alone for too long the line which divides the one from the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line.” p. 167
how other people see us (or “why i prefer to care (even if you don’t)”):
“She [Lyra, the dog] turns her head and looks at me, and there is a trustfulness in that look I probably do not deserve. But maybe that is not the point, to deserve it or not, perhaps it just exists, that trust, disconnected from who you are and what you have done, and is not to be measured in any way.” p. 196
how we sometimes feel:
“… a shipwrecked man without an anchor in the world except in his own liquid thoughts where time has lost its sequence.” p. 210
But don’t you think we should let people in? I am so guarded at times and would like people to care about me, the way I care about some people. I realize we don’t need to/should not let everyone in — there’s not enough time/energy to do that, but shouldn’t we try with a few people? And with the others, should we even go through this notion of telling them suitable things for them to feel like they know us? Would smalltalk and non-meaningful things be better? Or do we go through the whole charade to see if we want to get to know them better?
Am thinking about friendship, making friends, making meaningful friends, how that all works, how it differs for others, what constitutes a “friend” to someone, yet not quite a “friend” to another…