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| There Will Be Blood (2008) |
"Whenever I went deep enough into my childhood I was no longer outside, on the fringe, but snugly inside, like a pip in the fleshy heart of a ripe piece of fruit. I might be standing in front of Annie Heineken's candy shop, in the old 14th Ward, my nose pressed against the windowpane, my eyes aglitter at the sight of some chocolate-covered soldiers. That abstract noun, 'the world,' hadn't yet penetrated my consciousness. Everything was real, concrete, individuated, but neither fully named nor wholly delineated. I was and things were. Space was limitless, time was not yet. Annie Heineken was a person who always leaned far over the counter to put things in my hand, who patted me on the head, who smiled at me, who said I was such a good little fellow, and sometimes ran out into the street to kiss me goodbye, though we lived only a few doors away.
I honestly think that at times, out there on the fringe, when I got very quiet and still, I half expected someone to behave towards me exactly as Annie Heineken used to. Maybe I was running off to those faraway places of my childhood just to receive again that piece of candy, that smile, that embarrassing parting kiss. I was indeed an idealist. An incurable one. (An idealist is one who wants to turn the wheels back. He remembers too well what was given him; he doesn't think of what he himself might give. The world sours imperceptibly, but the process beings virtually from the moment one thinks in terms of 'the world.'" [sic]
Plexus, Henry Miller