Gerald Murnane: Inland

I have been writing about myself dreaming. I have been writing only to confuse you, Gunnarsen. I have confessed nothing. Read on, Gunnarsen, and learn what kind of man I am in fact. Read the true story, forger.

… And at some point on my walk that lasted for nearly a year of Januarys, I learned what sort of man I would be for the rest of my life.

I learned that no thing in the world is one thing; that each thing in the world is two things at least, and probably more than two things. I learned to find a queer pleasure in staring at a thing and deeming of how many things it might be.

Each person is more than one person. I am writing about a man who sits at a table in a room with books around the wall and who writes for day after day with a heaviness pressing on him.

I have found a way of watching a thing that shows me what I never see when I look at the thing. If I watch a thing from the sides of my eyes, I see in the thing the shape of another thing.

… A page of a book is not a window but a mirror.

On grasslands I almost forget my fear of drowning… I am not afraid of drowning in grass.