In a quiet moment in the late night/early morning of the middle of the weekend, while reading Borges(*), I was struck with a considerable predicament: Read on, grasping at the diaphanous clues that Borges leaves in his stories to drive you further into his trap, divesting you of your born reality and remaking it anew, or put the book down and try to mentally digest what I had already taken in, praying for some semblance of clarity. Being weak and overwhelmed, I chose to close the pages and sit and think. But clarity eluded me. He wrote at a level that I cannot fully appreciate, though I happily sit in awe of it. So I just rested my brain for a time, anticipating another attempt to dig into the work.
It is odd, now when I consider it, that I had not read Borges before. I’d heard of him, of course, seen various authors expound on the deep fascination they have with his work, but I resisted. Now, looking at the lost opportunities to have had a go at the works years ago, I feel that I only cheated myself some great pleasure. And now, in trying to rectify that error, am I getting to enjoy something that had been waiting for me all along. The Borgesian universe is vast, but I have found that it is also patient enough to be there when the lost among us discover it.
(*) Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
