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quotes from the ravickians by renee gladman

"i want to raze one city block of my mind, to open up the entire avenue for what is to come. for this purpose, i will relinquish the area i have dedicated to the study of maths, and, rather than find some cranny for the displaced information, i will let it go. yes, for about two hours - after this procedure but before i enter the performance hall - i will have an entirely empty corridor in my mind. empty. beautifully empty. of course, the danger is with the inevitable desire for more emptiness, which makes one attack other parts of one's mind. the compulsion is not unlike what follows the moment where you are conscious of the entire surface of your skin and there is one small patch over which someone has run her tongue and, above that spot, blown a bit of air. the cool of it. how you want to extend the feeling, so turn to other neighborhoods within you or beg the lover to move on with her tongue. how impossible it is, though, to make any more feeling than you already have. you run the risk of going utterly numb."

"why when i say dahar do you say 'yellow'? i know that word. the air here is not yellow. it is dahar (yellow). if you are engaged in a translation and discover that a quality you need to convey does not exist in your language, the language into which you are moving, do not pick the next best thing. sometimes you will have to put a '0' there; this will indicate a hole.

the ravickians know about this. if you do not acknowledge the ignorance you bear, then the places where you have facility in speaking will seem crowded and dull. this is not new: you need nothing to see something, which is the theory behind white space.

nevertheless, the day is beautiful for one who is returning to her intimates. i walked these same streets almost a week ago, but with my old mentality - 'without an actual boundary to cross, i will never reach you.' i did not arrive anywhere. i passed places that i thought could have been for me; i walked up to their doors, but never entered them. at the market i thought, 'this is a logical place to be.' but after visiting a few stalls, still empty-handed, i decided that i was not there. i was not at the bank to withdraw money for bills. i did not buy a hammock for my garden. jili harass did not meet me at cafe balva for an interview. the opening of the sisi sondergaard exhibit at fog gallery did not occur for me. nothing has happened for weeks, though i struggle to prove this. people will never believe you are 'without events.' and that is why decay is slow, and why it is not devastation."

"you cannot enter a place without proving to the occupants that you have a body. not just to display the limbs and skin you carry around with you, but to prove you are in a dialogue with them."

"when there is so little left you do not give it all to one; you fight to keep that thing in the mainstream. what could be worth that kind of sacrifice, literally ridding your house of its first step?"

"little has been said about ravicka's future, in whose hands it rests. if the adage is correct, then it should be with our young. but what allows one to grow old is stability and recognition. we have not had those things."

"i reach out with my mind to grab the misrepresentation before it penetrates him and remember how the outside confuses me lately. events do not unfold, as they should - the simplest, most benign gestures often ending in sadness. even when you are discussing the health benefits of tamarind you look up and find tears in the other's eyes, that person no less confused than you."

"the blinding, pent-up of trying to get a message to the next place, what we will become bas devrojalijin (after the rain). of moving so quickly from where we are that the words are erased by force of trying. stopping and changing the mode of transportation is the only way to convey the message, looking beyond matter to do so. . . i have a poem:

i was once
i was once in a movie
                                                  a great
                                                  house
isolated
by fire

                the heat
a voice of
leaving

                called out

but did not speak
   
                             the space
behind the voice

                  years before
                             i saw the imprint

cousins, when you are writing it is always the other place that haunts you. the place you just were. for most of my life i have regretted the decisions that saved me. yes, these last-minute departures have made me safer in the world, but my days pass as if i am missing something. the gossips say it's impossible to hear happy stories is ravicka. in belgium, they're saying this.

but receiving - whether it is by listening or reading - is a matter of waiting. we know this.

i have made a habit of staying in one place and looking outward, through screens and other people's books. i have tried to be ready."

"that it is there        the archive

               and fandwej        the real

         smolder inconsequently
for now
               it's now
               that worries him"

"          against
a rush of water

something broke

was going
too fast

            and nothing
            did appear
            that was not
            annihilated
            by the present

still the pails
going after it"

"fataki is not alone in his fever; i don't mean to isolate him. we are all doing our things more erratically, easy to attribute this to the despair. but why surrender the idea of permanence? must we lose faith in structure. . ."

 "time falls on it
and us                     differently

            we cannot stand
            the mess it makes

                                ignoring the safety
            between people

how it became its opposite"

"          standing -- is it that i'm
                   standing

is it you
who are next to me

            in front of me

this food line
for individuals

            where are we going
            did i come with you

so the bell rang
and we
            congregated here

with our notebook-pails
reaching

we were moving
you said
we were
moving

the steps
represented years

our people
fell off
entangled streets
a hand
reached out"

"-thirsty
-thirsty
-hunger and thirst
-my shoes conforming around my feet
-lefits' is through the next corridor
-one should lean on another's shoulder
-to show we have been brave, amini?
-to emphasize the extravagance of our walk"

"-my thanks to the poet of architecture
-but you are trying to say
-that i want to be here more
-you and ana patova, except her ambivalence
-the place she has gone?
-away with her thoughts
-we miss her already"

"-i am always concerned for my city
-yes, if you would allow me, you walk hesistantly toward it
-you would like me to be a guerrilla, sirin cucek?
-of sorts, luswage amini. if anyone can preserve these walls it is you
-but who is our enemy?
-that which is on the other side of our walls
-is not that us?
-we are pushing against a counter force
-at least, that is what we believe we are doing. can we trace this story to its beginning? to the moment of inheritance?"