By simplifying, by limiting both tendency and possibility, the narrowing of self and the narrowing of culture are economical impulses. The challenges of complexity require preparation, adaptation--ongoing adjustment that needs to match cultural expectations both at its initiation and at its closure. While crisis will suggest some permission to color outside of the lines, this novelty of freedom is permitted only within the strict order and assurance that the proper forces will coalesce quickly around the subjects when this brief, disruptive moment has passed. "There, you see, everything is just fine." The quality of merry enforcement contained in this phrase shame's the dreamer's nightmare and encourages a brave fiction. We are expected to be resolute (and quiet), keeping these darker passages out of sight, below the surface, like sea monsters...
"This journal is not a mere literary diversion. The further I progress, reducing to order what my past life suggests, and the more I persist in the rigor of composition--of the chapters, of the sentences, of the book itself--the more do I feel myself hardening in my will to utilize, for virtuous ends, my former hardships. I feel their power." --Jean Genet
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