Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe’

Rhys's presentation was richly provocative. I wish we'd had more time to discuss it. Maybe we can do that here?

Three quotes stood out to me:

• "One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life."
• "I rather think the world is like sand. The fundamental nature of sand is very difficult to grasp when you think of it in its stationary state. Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand."
• "Only a shipwrecked person who has just escaped drowning could understand the psychology of someone who breaks out in laughter just because he is able to breathe."

And, I could not help but think of Philip Pullman's "dust," which he has said is an analog in his work of consciousness, curiosity, and creativity-and is also an inexorable natural force (like Abe's "sand") with which we must grapple in our respective pursuits of happiness. 

Some questions:

• If sand is time itself, as we experience and embody  it, can we say the same of dust? (And are we, as the old song said, "dust in the wind"?)
• There's more to life than repetition, of course, but would you agree that happy people learn to love and  cherish the regular repetition of their various, multifarious springs of delight-like me and my dogwalks, for instance?
• Is there a connection of the flow of sand to  the "flow" of optimal human experience when time seems to vanish?
• The fact that we exist at all indicates that we are all survivors of "shipwreck" and should be laughing, no?

What other questions would any of us like to pose about this work?

Ploughshares