It was with this book that I started to dialog with Peter Clough’s writings. When I first met Melanie, it was the first name she came up with, after a terrific conversation we had. Before we left the place she asked me if had read anything or heard about Peter Clough. At that point I could not visualize what I was missing. Afterwards Melanie sent me a small piece of Narratives and Fictions, which gave me a taste of the text. I was invited by that small piece to continue my dialogue, and so I did.
Recently, I revisited the book. I am not such a furious reader that could read the entire book again in such a short period of time between the first time I’ve read and the second, but I managed to read all my highlighted paragraphs, and to rethink about most of the reflections in a new perspective.
In my first encounter with Clough’s writings I couldn’t imagine whether I would start some sort of study in this country or not, neither if those words, which touched me so deeply, would be part of my own reflections in some point. It was just a pleasant and reassuring reading – although this is something more significant than ‘just’ some kind of reading.
At the present moment, when I invited the book to dialogue again, and I decided which parts of our conversation I would like to revisit, I am reflecting about that with a different perspective. I already started my study and I am strongly committed with myself to find the best way to get the most out of it. Additionally, I am questioning my own abilities to do so, and to take advantage of my ‘weaknesses’ as a non-native speaker of the language of this study.
At the end of my second visit to this text, I feel challenged by the need to marry my own assumptions and premises, with the assumptions and advocacies presented in the book, adding something that I do not know yet exactly what it is.