All it needs is belief

All it needs is belief. And this, as I might have guessed, is how it is done. We give the gods a name and they quicken in us, they rise in their glory and power and majesty out of minds, they move forth to act in the world beyond, changing us and it. So it is that the beings we are in the process of becoming will be drawn out of us. We have only to find the name and let its illumination fill us. Beginning, as always, with what is simple.

An Imaginary Life
A novel by David Malouf

Naina

I am ready, baby. What can I promise you that will bring you to birth?

Tell me you will love me into being. Tell me you will not be afraid.

That would be untrue, baby.

Then tell me you will live with your fear and your doubt and even so, bring me to light.

-Shauna Singh Baldwin

a short excerpt, from the short story, ‘Naina’ from the book, ‘The HarperCollins Book of New Indian Fiction’. A short introduction, you can find on my other blog at,
http://www.delhidreams.blogspot.com

will be posting more from this wonderful collection.

Heart of Darkness

Droll thing life is- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late – a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.

Marlow, speaking in the Heart of Darkness
by, Joseph Conrad