Sunday, March 16, 2008

Paradise

"The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has He created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than He wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom, or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast, and are up against a force majeure. Their art itself is nothing but an attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one mood, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting. It is all wrong to imagine paradise as a never-changing state of bliss. It will probably, on the contrary, turn out to be, in the true spirit of God, an incessant up and down, a whirlpool of change. Only you may yourself, by that time, have become one with God, and have taken a liking to it."
Isak Dinesen, "The Monkey," Seven Gothic Tales

[Thanks JC!]