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I DIDN’T HEAR FROM HER again until the following summer, when a letter arrived from Bombay:
Dear Peter,
I’ve found an interesting way to think about myself in relation to the rest of the world, to everything, in fact, that is not my self, but especially to the people who have been and ever will be the audience for that work, my self, if it’s ever finished, and here it is: I am not the center of the universe, but I am the center of my universe. Do you like that? I think I like it. Reminding myself that I’m not the center of the universe is a great relief when I’ve begun to drift toward the attitude I have sometimes of feeling responsible for everything. I wasn’t entirely honest with you about punishing myself in my panopticon. The punishment wasn’t only for the things I claimed—Guy and your grandfather and my own shortcomings—but also for my part in everything—the war, and war, and human misery, and—well, as I said, everything. I try not to feel that way, to tell myself that I’ve paid for my part in the whole mess, but still, if I read a daily newspaper for too many days in a row I begin to feel that it’s all somehow my fault, and that there must be something that I could do to fix it all—not just some of it, but all of it, fix it all at one stroke. Ridiculous, I know, but it happens. Then I get a grip on myself and tell myself that my universe extends only to the limit of my influence, and I remember what my mother told me, that “there are limits to what even the best of cooks can do. You can’t make six clams into a dozen, for instance.” Whew. What a relief. When I was in my little house at night, when the darkness seemed to seep inside the warehouse from the frightening world outside, I began to feel that sense of centrality, and there, with my people around me, at the center of my world, I felt that I was safe. My audience, my people, were my insulation, and I imagined that, from the center, where I was, where I could see in all directions, if my eyes were only good enough, if only it weren’t for the opacity of things, that damned opacity, I could see them all, all, not just the ones who were there in the seats in front of me, but all of them, wherever they were! How I wish there were no opacity. Give me transparent things. Where I’m headed, there will be nights when I can allow myself to see, or convince myself that I can see, the true transparency of my universe. I will have a splendid model laid before me there—the vast, starry sky, the distant horizon, the arcing edge of the earth—and there, on a quiet night, I think I will really know that I am at the center of my universe—off in a corner of someone else’s, perhaps, but at the center of mine. I will set up house in the heart of it all, with the ebb and flow around me, in the midst of my world, at the center of my world, and yet I will be hidden from the world—independent, by myself. It’s time to go—again. I will leave Bombay today, with no more than half a dozen of my staunchest, weirdest fans trailing along behind me.
Love, Ariane
[to be continued]
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