like hell that we die right away.” Great. I’m five years old and Daddy is telling me to “embrace the blast.” At school, they tell me to duck and cover, that getting under the desk is the key to escaping nuclear annihilation. Daddy just wants us to all die asap. Borges might not have stored up food and water, but he would have tried to live. His world was light and full of possibility and uncertainty. It might not have made sense, but then, do any of our lives? Does it make sense that my father was sick and missed being on one certain mission in World War II and so he wasn’t with his squadron when every single man was killed? Does it make sense that some of those men’s widows wrote him for years afterwards asking him why he had lived? In Borges’ world, people do the unexpected. They feel no compulsion to make sense. A character named Pierre Menard wants to write Don Quixote. But it’s already been written, you say. Borges explains, He did not want to compose another Quixote —which is easy— but the Quixote itself. … he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes. But why, we might ask? Why write Quixote when Cervantes has already written it and , according to most, done a fine job. That makes no sense.
Yes, Borges answers.
What’s the value of making sense, after all? Making sense is easy. It’s expected. Why not explore our other options? My father would have told me there were no other options. I’ve decided to value options other than his notion that there are no options. I’ve become open to not making sense. In the words of the Talking Heads, I got a girlfriend that’s better than that Everyone’s getting involved As we get older and stop making sense You won’t find her waiting long Stop making sense, stop making sense, stop making sense, making sense I got a girlfriend that’s better than that and nothing is better than this, is it? 43