Mr Palomar (Vintage Classics) by Italo Calvino Page B

system of power; but if the efficacy of the system is measured by its invulnerability and capacity to last, the model becomes a kind of fortress whose thick walls conceal what is outside. Palomar, who from powers and counter-powers expects always the worst, was finally convinced that what really counts is what happens despite them: the form that society is assuming slowly, silently, anonymously, in people’s habits, their way of thinking and acting, in their scale of values. If this is how things stand, the model of models Palomar dreams of must serve to achieve transparent models, diaphanous, fine as cobwebs, or perhaps even to dissolve models, or indeed to dissolve itself.
    At this point the only thing Palomar can do was erase from his mind all models and the models of models. When this step is also taken, then he finds himself face to face with reality – hard to master and impossible to homogenize – as he formulates his “yesses” and his “noes”, his “buts”. To do this, it is better for the mind to remain cleared, furnished only by the memory of fragments of experience and of principles understood and not demonstrable. This is not a line of conduct from which he can derive special satisfaction, but it is the only one that proves practicable for him.
    As long as it is a matter of demonstrating the ills of society and the abuses of those who abuse, he has no hesitations (except for the fear that, if they are talked about too much, even the most just propositions can sound repetitive, obvious, tired). He finds it more difficult to say something about the remedies, because first he would like to make sure they do not cause worse ills and abuses, and that if wisely planned by enlightened reformers, they can then be put into practice without harm by their successors: foolish perhaps, perhaps frauds, perhaps frauds and foolish at once.
    He has only to expound these fine thoughts in a systematic form, but a scruple restrains him: what if a model did not result? And so he prefers to keep his convictions in the fluid state, check them instance by instance, and make them the implicit rule of his own everyday behavior, in doing or not doing, in choosing or rejecting, in speaking or in remaining silent.

THE MEDITATIONS OF PALOMAR
     
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    The world looks at the world
     
    After a series of intellectual misadventures not worth recalling, Mr Palomar has decided that his chief activity will be looking at things from the outside. A bit nearsighted, absent-minded, introverted, he does not seem to belong temperamentally to that human type generally called an observer. And yet it has always happened that certain things – a stone wall, a seashell, a leaf, a teapot – present themselves to him as if asking him for minute and prolonged attention: he starts observing them almost unawares and his gaze begins to run over all the details, and is then unable to detach itself. Mr Palomar has decided that from now on he will redouble his attention: first, by not allowing these summons to escape him as they arrive from things; second, to attribute to the observer’s operation the importance it deserves.
    At this point a first critical moment arrives: sure that from now on the world will reveal an infinite wealth of things for him to look at, Mr Palomar tries staring at everything that comes within eyeshot; he feels no pleasure, and he stops. A second phase follows, in which he is convinced that only some things are to be looked at, others not, and he must go and seek the right ones. To do this, he has to face each time problems of selection, exclusion, hierarchies of preference; he soon realizes he is spoiling everything, as always when he involves his own ego and all the problems he has with his own ego.
    But how can you look at something and set your own ego aside? Whose eyes are doing the looking? As a rule, you think of the ego as one who is peering out of your own eyes as if leaning on a windowsill, looking at the world