Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier out of it, in a narrative past or a prophetic future, locked inside that weird tence grammar does not allow, the imaginary present.
John FowlesIt came to meโฆthat I didnโt want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencingโฆa new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.
John FowlesMedieval theologians used to dispute how the angels in the heaven spent their time, when not balancing on needle points and singing anthems to the Lord. I know. They slump glued to their clouds, glasses at the ready, as the Archangel Micheal (that well-known slasher) and stonewalling St Peter open against the Devils XI. It could not be Heaven, otherwise.
John FowlesIt's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.
John Fowles