Monday, June 22, 2009

Borrowed Words - Monday


I first learned about Borrowed Words on Monday while visiting Reading Extravaganza's Blog. I immediately thought about a Rushdie quote, I wrote down sometime ago that really made me stop and think, so much so, I had to write this one down. Here goes:

“For a long while I have believed…that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams…: alone in our beds (because we are alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves, we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.” — Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
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Still time to enter yourself in my giveaway.

8 comments:

  1. This is fantastic. I hope I'll get a chance to read this book some day.

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  2. Awesome post. I find Rushdie profound and have long wanted to read all of his books. So far, I have only gotten to about 3, but I look forward to reading the rest. My favorite so far is Midnight's Children

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  3. Wow, that is really powerful stuff. I can relate to alot of it. I will definately read more from Rushdie.

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  4. That's very interesting and a lot to think and ponder over!

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  5. Just stopping by to say Hi and nice blog

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  6. Wow!! I really need to read Rushdie....

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  7. Thanks for sharing this quote -- I absolutely love it.

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  8. That's quite a quote! I read it thru twice to make sure I got it all. He doesn't waste a word, does he ... even though the quote is long, every part of it has meaning.

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