2007 School Magazine

From That Sunday, In Five Parts I

Things are more beautiful in the place where they do not speak. I found myself there a few hours ago, when I tripped past the earth-coloured buildings (those mentioned in his novel) – I overheard them all not thinking about the ideas they were not discussing. It was sublime. I had struck the land that Proust imagined; that the Sufis rendered as faith. Heaven, I almost choked in that delirious passion. II “Do away with scripture and signature. Do not speak any word that has already been spoken.” Baffled. “But, my dear sir, if you please. If this is so, we cannot speak at all.” “I very much look forward to meeting you inside, then.” “But what is to become of all these damned words? Where are they to go?” “Write them down, my boy. Write them down.” III It was fantasy. No sentence, no comment was given utterance – punctuation and grammar and accuracy were scorned, and yet it was the loudest exchange I had ever encountered. This was the game: splashings of give-and-take thoughts, tacit dialogues taken to the mortar and pestle of understanding, hands touching hands in mutual events, one passionate idea reaching thousands more within seconds in a glorious network of unspoken harmonies. IV There is no such real place, of course. We are human things after all, states protocol. But that dream space is very much alive. As I said, I found myself there only a few hours ago – it certainly takes someone very special to send you there. V From one ally to another: do away with reasons. Only the irrational is permitted in the place where we do not speak. That is what makes things so beautiful here. Madeleine Bendixen (11L) Betty Woolcock Challenge Cup: Years 11–12

TOP: Olivia Lam (12M) MIDDLE: Judith Redsell (12H) BOTTOM: Emma Hocknell (12L)

MIDDLE: Amy Grant (10G)

TOP: Liberty Christian (11L) MIDDLE: Cosima McGrath (11L)

TOP: Jennifer Short (11W)

brisbane girls grammar school 70

school magazine 2007 71