Moment

In describing a moment, or rather what one soul might feel at any given instant, it may well be said that the entire experience of time for that soul must be called upon, for that is what a moment is; all of time for one soul condensed, compressed and sealed in one instant. Should I say for instance, that while sitting in a car, he finished reading a novel? A novel where the final words filled him with such sadness, or should I say that upon finishing a novel in a borrowed car that the first thing he saw upon closing the book was the petals of a tree in late bloom were scattered in wind and rain, and that this image was then gently extinguished by drops of rain on the windshield, thereby obscuring it? Or perhaps I should write that he thought for years that the precise image he had just seen was the exact image of happiness and that he had always wished to film it? At any rate he watched this image unfold and become obscured as a sadness filled him upon finishing that bitter and beautiful masterpiece of a book. It might be enough to write that with the passenger windows of the borrowed car open that four teenaged boys sat on a grassy slope to his left and as he listened to these boys, these Kings of Leisure quietly laugh, bounce a ball that their pleasant patterings sent him into his own past, for he was once a Sovereign of Leisure too, who though not often bouncing a ball, had Laid Waste to Time while sitting while sitting on grass, scented in rain. No, it was the first notes of music he had once played with his brother, who he missed and therefore brought the CD of a concert they had played once in Finland to play in the borrowed car. This music from the concert in Helsinki, and the series of notes he had played and was not satisfied with and gave to his brother, who took them and worked on them as a writer works on words, or a painter does with color, and made these notes beautiful, so the concert could continue in joy. As these notes played in the car as he finished that very sad novel, his mind went to Finland, to the sunny Island where their kind host took them, to the nap they took outside the museum on a grassy slope in a park before performing the concert. As these Kings of Leisure sat to his left, softly Killing Time, those notes of music played, and that singular image of happiness was blotted out by rain, he was filled with an almost lovely sadness, and he thought all these things in a moment, at once, and he thought to write down that moment. Scrambling for paper before this moment faded like dreams do upon waking, he ripped a paper sac open and tried to describe something beautiful.

This describing of a moment is also a review of the novel, Seiobo There Below, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai