Flights. Part 1.

In spite of all things involved - a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence, that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.

They weren’t real travelers: they left in order to return.

But I never became a real writer. Life always managed to elude me.

Only what is different will survive.

“The things I’ve seen are mine now.”

By now they must have become aware of their own instability and dependence upon places, times of day, on language or on a city and its atmosphere.

Time is circular.

Every moment is unique; no moment can ever be repeated. This idea favors risk-taking, living life to the fullest, seizing the day.

Real life takes place in movement.

But the point isn’t always to get there faster.

They are borne by the night. Not knowing anyone and being recognized by no one.

If we wish to catalog humankind in a convincing way, we can do so only by placing people in some sort of motion, moving from one place toward another.

Desire indicates direction, but never destination.

This process of striving is best encapsulated in the preposition ‘toward’. Toward what?

Synchronicity, evidence of the world making sense. Evidence that throughout this beautiful chaos threads of meaning spread in every direction, networks of strange logic, all bearing, if one were to believe in God, the contorted imprints of His fingers

Just when estuaries started to blend into the open waters of the seas, just when he’d enlist for a ship heading home, suddenly some new opportunity would arise, more often than not in the exact opposite direction, and if he did hesitate for a moment, he would usually come to the conclusion that the truest argument was an old one - the earth is round, let us not be too attached, then, to directions.

There are things that happen of their own accord. journeys that begin and end in dreams.

The island state is a state of remaining within one’s own boundaries, undisturbed by any external influence; it resembles a kind of narcissism or even autism. One satisfies all one’s needs on one’s own.

If something hurts me, I erase it from my mental map.

Night never ends. Its dominion always spans some section of the world.

Excerpts from ‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk. Riverhead Books. New York. 2017.