rivulets
But memory’s sudden release of the genie held captive inside matter, like a spirit bottled by an evil witch, is much more often for me both generator and principle of a happy feverish fugue than the quietism of a Proustian illumination. Resparked, the precious images kept so long in darkness – all of them – ignite and set each other ablaze; a flaming line zig-zags across a dozing world and sows it with light as it travels the secret fissures – an experience, a reading, a decisive encounter that prompts another – that have, year after year, marked it with my initials. The virtue of genuine contact with something that had at one time captivated me is that it awakens, reanimates, and binds with streaks of lightning everything I have ever loved.
—Julien Graqc, The Narrow Waters, p. 33f.
