Jorge Luis Borges and the Modern Jane Austen.

"To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract."  
"I sometimes think that good readers are poets as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves... Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing-- more resigned, more civil, more intellectual."
~from the original preface and "Funes, His Memory," within the Collected Fictions of J.L.B.

    I don't believe I've ever been able to honestly pin-point a favorite author of any sort, or to really decide on my preferred choice of reading genre... but today, for the most part, I can.  Thumbing through books, a couple hundred books, within Craig and Gaye's musky, retired whiskey and sour-boot smelling library, did I just happen to pluck out Jorge Luis Borges' translated print of his "Collected Fictions," aged of approximately the mid 1920s up to his death in '86.  The man is an Argentinian master-mind. Brilliant in his writings, and I assume as wonderful as his short stories are in English, the translations musn't do the honor as the original Spanish texts. They're probably much more richly loaded with vocabulary twice as colorful as what we get to explore.  His style is as abstract, yet masterfully wound and rooted as the well suited painting on its cover-- they say to never judge a book by it's cover... save for the book being printed with a section of Hieronymous Bosch's triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights."  It takes one to see it to really understand what it's all about- or isn't about.(Look above)
     Back to thinking "much ado about nothing"... well, like I said, I do a lot of thinking up here.  Here- on the farm- in New Zealand- about 900 miles away from where I first began in Dunedin (about 7,000 miles away from home)- with the rain, and generally wind- lots of books- lots of time- lots of layers (socks, sweaters, beanies)- oh, and A LOT of tea.  
     So all this 'thinking' has got me thinkin': This has got to be a parallel of Jane Austen's world, in the way I see her life, and all that made her think so much to write so many great novels.-- Now I am NOT AT ALL saying that I can write any sort of grandeur piece of literature as she has... I don't even write... unless it's for you all... but anyway, she must've had A LOT of time on her hands- on her family's estate (a.k.a. a farm)- in cold, Elizabethian England (I'm guessing)- with the rain and the wind- and her books- and time- and layers- and of course, A LOT of tea-- English may it be... mine, well at the moment it's lemon and honey.  
     So here it is, that I compare my current situation to that of what I believe could be similar, in a modern, yet retrospective modern way, considering of what my situation could really be-- possibly adding a central heating system, home insulation, and maybe a bit of--- nearby CIVILIZATION?--- sorry, enough of the sass talk.  Yes, I do compare it to what my interpretation and imagination has led me to believe of what Jane Austen had lived like, what sparked her imagination and understanding and views of life, the living, and the loved-- although I don't believe there is anyone near the character of a Mr. Darcy within a 100 mile radius of this place.
     In conclusion, I am, for a short moment, a modern Jane Austen.  Currently a slave to endless un-read pages, fictitious or not, found, yet hidden all around.  With the use of the observations of daily life on the farm, with family, and the interactions of the combination of it all-- a sprouting anthropologist as well I might say.  Though I don't wish to be compared to the lady, just paralleled I presume, because I don't intend to live through my writings-- I say my short-lived writings are to live through me.


I guess that's enough for now, but I must give credit for J.L.B for giving me a spark to have something of interest to write about again~ Cheers Jorge!


Cheerio,
Koko