In playing with phantasy a thing called literature often is able to point at human behaviour as well as at deep processes surrounding being human. What does it mean waching an entity? What happens while waching? Is there any transference going on? And if so - where does it lead to? Is waching only a one - way - process or rather a mutual event?
Of course we could extend this subject to the Alien case. Obviously there are lots of people claiming Alien encounter thus already being in the waching process - they are not able to get rid of it. Is there also transference taking place?
This is exactly the story Julio Cortazar wrote to perplex the reader.
In Axolotl, Cortazar describes a man who goes several times to visit the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris where he sees and becomes fascinated and later obsessed with an type of a salamander known as an axolotl. The protagonist is particularly attracted to the axolotl due to two distinctive features: he notices that his limbs peculiarly resemble those of a human, even with what appears to be tiny fingers. He also learns upon investigation that the axolotl is unique in being both in its larval stage and in its mature stage at the same time, therefore able to recreate with no distinction of gender.
Once familiar and mesmerized by these observations, he returns to the aquarium on a daily basis, stands in front of the aquarium and silently interacts with the axolotl, forming what he believe to be a unique and secretive communication the spirit of the axolotl. He spends long periods of time standing there, day after day.
And then it happens: he becomes an axolotl going into changing perspective. The observer becomes the observed...
Read that deep little story here:
http://sayberklas.tripod.com/anthology_ ... /id32.html
Of course we could extend this subject to the Alien case. Obviously there are lots of people claiming Alien encounter thus already being in the waching process - they are not able to get rid of it. Is there also transference taking place?
This is exactly the story Julio Cortazar wrote to perplex the reader.
In Axolotl, Cortazar describes a man who goes several times to visit the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris where he sees and becomes fascinated and later obsessed with an type of a salamander known as an axolotl. The protagonist is particularly attracted to the axolotl due to two distinctive features: he notices that his limbs peculiarly resemble those of a human, even with what appears to be tiny fingers. He also learns upon investigation that the axolotl is unique in being both in its larval stage and in its mature stage at the same time, therefore able to recreate with no distinction of gender.
Once familiar and mesmerized by these observations, he returns to the aquarium on a daily basis, stands in front of the aquarium and silently interacts with the axolotl, forming what he believe to be a unique and secretive communication the spirit of the axolotl. He spends long periods of time standing there, day after day.
And then it happens: he becomes an axolotl going into changing perspective. The observer becomes the observed...
Read that deep little story here:
http://sayberklas.tripod.com/anthology_ ... /id32.html
Replies
I would maybe fall in love with some...