Muss es sein?

"He did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love."

"...Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory."

He suddenly recalled the famous myth from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another.

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

His other part is the young woman he dreamed about.

The trouble is, man does not meet the other part of himself. Instead he is sent a woman from the bulrush basket. But what happens if he nevertheless later meets the one who was meant for him, the other part of himself? Whom is he to prefer? The woman from the bulrush basket or the woman from Plato's myth?



"And at some point, he realized to his great surprise that he was not particularly unhappy. Her physical presence was much less important than he had suspected. What was important was the golden footprint, the magic footprint she had left on his life and no one could ever remove."

"In other words, she was pounding on the gate of his poetic memory. But the gate was shut. There was no room for her in his poetic memory. There was room for her only on the rug."

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."