visible zones but the play of light overall allowed me to suppose that the scenery behind the furthest discernible blurs and smudges would have been more richly illumined still.
The game mentioned earlier would have begun on some or another occasion when I saw myself as travelling from the shadowy foreground into the brightly lit distance, past the bridge and the river and then across the grassy countryside. On that occasion, I would have decided that I was viewing my admired illustration from the wrong direction, as it were. For a few moments, I would have seen the calendar-illustration as other than a patch of painted scenery hanging in a shabby room in the place that I called the world. During those moments, the source of the light behind the dark trees might have been a sun hardly different from the sun that shone often on my own world—not a painted image of a sun but an actual sun. For a few moments, I would have understood that the clump of trees and the verandah were the dark background and that what I had taken for the distant background was brightly lit foreground. The persons around the verandah were of little account. Anyone peering in on them from the darkness behind them mattered even less. The true subject-matter was yet to be seen. The game, if ever I had succeeded at it, would have consisted of my seeming to travel to the end of the grassy countryside while the light around me intensified and while I strained to make out the first details of the land that began where the painted places ended.
I can hardly believe nowadays that I wrote for thirty years and more before I arrived at the decision reported in the fourth paragraph of this piece of fiction: before I gave up a certain sort of writing. I can only suppose that I wrote during those thirty and more years so that I could explicate whatever mysteries seemed to require explication in the territory bordered on three sides by the vaguest of my memories and my desires and on its fourth side by a strangely lit horizon in a remembered reproduction of some or another famous painting. I can only suppose that I wrote fiction for thirty and more years in order to rid myself of certain obligations that I felt as a result of my having read fiction. Something else I can hardly believe nowadays: during those thirty and more years, I sometimes recalled my childhood ploy of seeing, or seeming to see, places further off than certain painted places, and yet what I recalled seemed quite unconnected with what I was doing as a writer of fiction. Not until the afternoon mentioned in the fourth paragraph of this piece of fiction did I understand how many were the blank pages; how ample was the space on the far side of every piece of fiction that I had written or had read.
I can make one last attempt to answer the question why did I write what I wrote for thirty and more years? Perhaps I wrote in order to provide myself with the equivalent in the invisible world of Tasmania and New Zealand in the visible world.
I am not unwilling to travel on land. On a memorable occasion nearly fifty years ago, I travelled by land almost to the southern border of Queensland. A year afterwards, I travelled by land to the eastern shore of the Great Australian Bight. Even nowadays, I travel sometimes to the far west of Victoria; to a small town mentioned earlier in this piece of fiction. I do not however, travel through air or across water. I have several reasons for not travelling thus, but I mention here the only reason that belongs in this piece of fiction. My view of the world has in the foreground a roughly L-shaped tract of land reaching from Bendigo through Melbourne to Warrnambool. I look often across this foreground in my mind, and always in a westerly or a north-westerly direction. In the middle ground is mostly level grassy countryside not without trees or even stands of forest. In the background is the wider world, as I call it, which most often appears to me as a series of
The game mentioned earlier would have begun on some or another occasion when I saw myself as travelling from the shadowy foreground into the brightly lit distance, past the bridge and the river and then across the grassy countryside. On that occasion, I would have decided that I was viewing my admired illustration from the wrong direction, as it were. For a few moments, I would have seen the calendar-illustration as other than a patch of painted scenery hanging in a shabby room in the place that I called the world. During those moments, the source of the light behind the dark trees might have been a sun hardly different from the sun that shone often on my own world—not a painted image of a sun but an actual sun. For a few moments, I would have understood that the clump of trees and the verandah were the dark background and that what I had taken for the distant background was brightly lit foreground. The persons around the verandah were of little account. Anyone peering in on them from the darkness behind them mattered even less. The true subject-matter was yet to be seen. The game, if ever I had succeeded at it, would have consisted of my seeming to travel to the end of the grassy countryside while the light around me intensified and while I strained to make out the first details of the land that began where the painted places ended.
I can hardly believe nowadays that I wrote for thirty years and more before I arrived at the decision reported in the fourth paragraph of this piece of fiction: before I gave up a certain sort of writing. I can only suppose that I wrote during those thirty and more years so that I could explicate whatever mysteries seemed to require explication in the territory bordered on three sides by the vaguest of my memories and my desires and on its fourth side by a strangely lit horizon in a remembered reproduction of some or another famous painting. I can only suppose that I wrote fiction for thirty and more years in order to rid myself of certain obligations that I felt as a result of my having read fiction. Something else I can hardly believe nowadays: during those thirty and more years, I sometimes recalled my childhood ploy of seeing, or seeming to see, places further off than certain painted places, and yet what I recalled seemed quite unconnected with what I was doing as a writer of fiction. Not until the afternoon mentioned in the fourth paragraph of this piece of fiction did I understand how many were the blank pages; how ample was the space on the far side of every piece of fiction that I had written or had read.
I can make one last attempt to answer the question why did I write what I wrote for thirty and more years? Perhaps I wrote in order to provide myself with the equivalent in the invisible world of Tasmania and New Zealand in the visible world.
I am not unwilling to travel on land. On a memorable occasion nearly fifty years ago, I travelled by land almost to the southern border of Queensland. A year afterwards, I travelled by land to the eastern shore of the Great Australian Bight. Even nowadays, I travel sometimes to the far west of Victoria; to a small town mentioned earlier in this piece of fiction. I do not however, travel through air or across water. I have several reasons for not travelling thus, but I mention here the only reason that belongs in this piece of fiction. My view of the world has in the foreground a roughly L-shaped tract of land reaching from Bendigo through Melbourne to Warrnambool. I look often across this foreground in my mind, and always in a westerly or a north-westerly direction. In the middle ground is mostly level grassy countryside not without trees or even stands of forest. In the background is the wider world, as I call it, which most often appears to me as a series of
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