nada’s Reviews > Byobu > Status Update

Internal Coherence

Every time I resolved to become someone different, sighs Byobu, I proceeded to stay the same. Every time I veered down a seemingly new current, oriented toward a different cardinal point, I whirled in circles, returning to my first immersion. Where am I, relative to my first mistake? Where, relative to my first certainty? What is our human obligation: to resist the pull of the stochastic force, both arbitrary and decisive, generated by society, or surrender to a power that knows what we do not, that thinks for us and rules for itself, even if we don’t approve of our own partial – in the best-case scenario – annihilation?
Resisting makes us pointless members of society. But here, now, what is valued more and more is immorality without ideas, fatuous strength and those who bestow it with power, and the little wise guys who devote the width of their wit to achieving their little objectives: prevailing in their limited fields of activity (an office, university, club, human group, whichever it may be, even people sitting together on a beach). Isn’t it immoral to surrender to the temptation to walk through those territories, governed by the boorish authorities who rule during these evil times we inhabit?
Byobu analyzes the orbit that defined his revolutions following an intention he once believed to be correct, almost inevitable. Surrendering to social pressure, diffuse to the extent that it was emitted from almost every neighboring point, but turbulent; and annihilating himself. Looking back, he later concludes it was also fateful that the turbulence, appropriately intermittent, had prompted such a response: his own. And he’s somewhat calmed concerning his current position relative to that distant and contentious starting point. Now he resists on the inside, while staying quiet and feigning surrender.

內在的一致
每次我決心變成另一個人，Byobu 嘆息，我接著做的卻是維持原樣。每次我轉向一股看似新的水流，朝另一個方位前進，卻兜起圈子，回到第一次浸入之處。相對於最初的錯誤，我在哪裡？相對於最初的確信，又在哪裡？身而為人的義務是什麼：抵抗社會產生的那股隨機力量的拉扯，它任意而具決定性；還是向一股權力投降，它知道我們不知道的，替我們思考，為自己統治，即使我們並不贊成自己被部分地——這已是最好的情況——消滅？
抵抗使我們成為社會中無用的成員。但在這裡，在此刻，愈來愈受重視的，卻是沒有思想的不道德、愚妄的強力，以及賦予它權力的人，還有那些把全部小聰明都用來達成小目標的小機靈鬼：在各自有限的活動範圍裡占上風——辦公室、大學、俱樂部、人群，無論哪一種，甚至一群坐在海灘上的人。在我們身處的這個邪惡時代，那些領域由粗鄙的權威掌管；屈從於走進那些領域的誘惑，難道不是不道德？
Byobu 分析那條軌道，它界定了自己追隨某個意圖時的旋轉；那意圖，他曾以為正確，幾乎不可避免。屈從社會壓力，這壓力從鄰近幾乎每個點發出，因此分散，卻又洶湧；並且消滅自己。後來回望，他得出結論，那適時、間歇的洶湧，竟引發如此反應——他自己的反應——同樣是命定的。想到如今的位置與那個遙遠、充滿爭議的起點之間的關係，他稍微平靜了。如今他在內部抵抗，同時保持沉默，假裝投降。

詞語是一種整理內在紛亂的方式，讓我們比獨自沉默更好。有時，我們必須使它們改變走過世界的步態，改變那不純的用法；我們已習慣那種用法如麂皮般柔滑的自動運作。

Words are a way of organizing our inner turmoil, of being better than alone, silent. Sometimes we must make them alter the way they walk through the world, their impure usage to whose sueded automatism we become accustomed.

等待遲遲不來的東西，一輛巴士，或一個希望實現時，倘若同時選擇觀看世界，延誤會比較容易忍受。即使它在那麼多小細節上令我們失望，仍可能無意間提供某種愉快：天空的顏色，鳥的飛翔，另一個人身上某件令人好奇的事。

While one waits for something that doesn’t come, a bus or the fulfillment of a hope, the delay is more tolerable if in the meantime one chooses to look at the world. Even though it disappoints us in so many little details, it can involuntarily offer something pleasant, the color of the sky, the flight of the birds, something intriguing about another human being.

Vitale has said that she was inspired to write poetry by reading the work of Antonio Machado. “The world is full of people who are too satisfied,” Vitale once observed. “We have to know that we can always go one step further. And most of all, we mustn’t accept that language says everything. What is said is a specter, a phantom of something else.”