consuming and frustrating work. What was worse was that what I was decoding made little sense to me, it wasn't a memoir, it wasn't a secret reservoir of a dying man's thoughts. At first I thought it was some kind of novel but that idea didn't fit either. To be honest I had no idea what I was reading.
Reading it word by word of course didn't help. It was better viewed at a distance and read as a whole.
It has lain in my desk drawer now for close to two years and every time I look at my translation of these words I can make no real sense of them, that is why I have decided to sit down and commit all this to paper and leave it all to be read and understood by others.
Are these the words of a madman? Had the cancer spread to his brain? If not the work of a crazy person is it a novella? If so why in code? Why directed at me? Why left for me? Why the secrecy? I certainly at the moment of writing have no idea. Either it is a puzzle never to be solved or else I need to take a different tack altogether on what I have found. Perhaps I am missing a key that would unlock the mystery of these notebooks, after all he left me a key to unlock the books in the first place would it not be reasonable to assume that since the document was not clear that there would be key elsewhere to explain? A commentary of some kind?
Was there meant to be but he had died before he had had time to give me the final clue?
With these thoughts I left my writing and took time away not only to think but also to go through all the old papers and to examine again the suitcase. I found nothing. I was frustrated yet again. So frustrated I needed to take my mind off everything and I put on my coat and went for a walk in the park. I took in little of what was around me as I was lost inside myself. I heard the burn rippling and wind in the trees and the texture of the ground beneath my feet. I was aware on one level of my surroundings but my real self was locked inside rolling it all over in my head. What on earth did it all mean?
I wished or at least part of me wished I had never found the notebooks, never found the key to unlock them. Part of me decided to throw it all out and get on with my life and then I was reminded of my Grandfather the close bond we had formed and the fact that in his dying days he had taken such time and given over such precious time in writing this for me.
I kicked absent mindedly at a stone and watched it arc into the burn.
I stopped and watched it fall in to the water, watched its ripples disturbed and confused by the flow and I thought of his memoir again and his writings on time and space and his limited understanding of string theory. Was there a clue to be found there? Why had he been so interested in these matters? They were outside what I would have called his field. I had tried to read up on string theory and other ideas that he had but my brain wasn't up to the arguments I had read about, the words made sense but not the whole. Much I mused like these notebooks, the words made sense not the whole? If I could make sense of the whole I would understand what lay behind the words.
I had thought perhaps it was an allegorical novella, but that not only seemed unlikely but didn't address the issues of secrecy surrounding the writing.
My thoughts were narrowing down now to two possible answers to the notebooks.
The first they were the ramblings of an ill man and were encoded simply because he was no longer quite sane and his brain was deeply affected by cancer.
The second and I had to not only take a deep external breath but also one inside and make a leap, into the dark, an uncomfortable leap, they could be true. Having acknowledged that as a possibility for the first time I felt a shiver go through my body and tingling, like a moment of revelation. Was that the key to understand them? Read them as the truth?
I hung over the bridge crossing the burn and stared down into the water, my eyes out of focus and my thoughts turned
Reading it word by word of course didn't help. It was better viewed at a distance and read as a whole.
It has lain in my desk drawer now for close to two years and every time I look at my translation of these words I can make no real sense of them, that is why I have decided to sit down and commit all this to paper and leave it all to be read and understood by others.
Are these the words of a madman? Had the cancer spread to his brain? If not the work of a crazy person is it a novella? If so why in code? Why directed at me? Why left for me? Why the secrecy? I certainly at the moment of writing have no idea. Either it is a puzzle never to be solved or else I need to take a different tack altogether on what I have found. Perhaps I am missing a key that would unlock the mystery of these notebooks, after all he left me a key to unlock the books in the first place would it not be reasonable to assume that since the document was not clear that there would be key elsewhere to explain? A commentary of some kind?
Was there meant to be but he had died before he had had time to give me the final clue?
With these thoughts I left my writing and took time away not only to think but also to go through all the old papers and to examine again the suitcase. I found nothing. I was frustrated yet again. So frustrated I needed to take my mind off everything and I put on my coat and went for a walk in the park. I took in little of what was around me as I was lost inside myself. I heard the burn rippling and wind in the trees and the texture of the ground beneath my feet. I was aware on one level of my surroundings but my real self was locked inside rolling it all over in my head. What on earth did it all mean?
I wished or at least part of me wished I had never found the notebooks, never found the key to unlock them. Part of me decided to throw it all out and get on with my life and then I was reminded of my Grandfather the close bond we had formed and the fact that in his dying days he had taken such time and given over such precious time in writing this for me.
I kicked absent mindedly at a stone and watched it arc into the burn.
I stopped and watched it fall in to the water, watched its ripples disturbed and confused by the flow and I thought of his memoir again and his writings on time and space and his limited understanding of string theory. Was there a clue to be found there? Why had he been so interested in these matters? They were outside what I would have called his field. I had tried to read up on string theory and other ideas that he had but my brain wasn't up to the arguments I had read about, the words made sense but not the whole. Much I mused like these notebooks, the words made sense not the whole? If I could make sense of the whole I would understand what lay behind the words.
I had thought perhaps it was an allegorical novella, but that not only seemed unlikely but didn't address the issues of secrecy surrounding the writing.
My thoughts were narrowing down now to two possible answers to the notebooks.
The first they were the ramblings of an ill man and were encoded simply because he was no longer quite sane and his brain was deeply affected by cancer.
The second and I had to not only take a deep external breath but also one inside and make a leap, into the dark, an uncomfortable leap, they could be true. Having acknowledged that as a possibility for the first time I felt a shiver go through my body and tingling, like a moment of revelation. Was that the key to understand them? Read them as the truth?
I hung over the bridge crossing the burn and stared down into the water, my eyes out of focus and my thoughts turned
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