What did reading Dostoevsky – late teens/early twenties – do to me? Do to my mind? He tunnelled into and through it, opening up new passages, vast chambers, narrow twisting, water-filled ways, turned darkness ever darker, exposing hidden machinery of perversity and complexity, opaqueness and mystery. Did he, I ask myself forty years or so on, set me off on my life's path? Not exactly a slap on the back and a 'good luck'. More like I blinked in bewildered astonishment, stumbled and took a step.
Was it an illusion, my discernment of that path? No, I don't think it was entirely but perhaps the question can be refined as to what sort of path I imagined it to be. Though whether we ever see our path ahead with any sort of reality is doubtful. I can see a faint but definite glow of glory in my image of the path. Is that glow the glow of anticipation, of hope – what I saw back then – or is it the superimposition of the lived experience of the path? Yes to both of those. The excitement of new life. The actual glory of sexual love, the glory of lighting upon new thoughts.
Was I lucky? Yes.
Was there pain, suffering, difficulty? Yes.
Did I doubt? Yes.
And I continue.
Am I grateful? Yes.
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