{"product_id":"and-my-bright-abyss","title":"And My Bright Abyss","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Mischief-Arcadia-Other-Tales-Sabbagh\/dp\/B0GMYSJ4FB\/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1N6XPY3Y0356F\u0026amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.r0RCsufSze51dzjZT0FLtrg-wJ0EyEO7WUgBUy-3oRngiC6IILJH7Si0HslnSamV28o1_dqKR67z-_o7eWu-2mp0iKlIRDvJNtKEgGd7FvoAYY_8MrK1vnHWCKHVoEHG9JCu7QNtoVgjmb3iv7qo9HxGRu9TJSoMGt3tMeyQZxQdL1cLph45CPROuTU8v33OLpnknexkyXpSRem0niKtFQ.kUgSwHE1G2nlPpfIC53aOgQy4OmWMFjc6tl3Sp_ebyk\u0026amp;dib_tag=se\u0026amp;keywords=omar+sabbagh\u0026amp;qid=1778651369\u0026amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C196\u0026amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003e\"Mischief in Arcadia \u0026amp; Other Tales\"\u003c\/a\u003e is a newly released collection of short stories and “veiled memoirs” by Dr. Omar Sabbagh, published by Sulfur Editions in 2026. The book gathers eleven pieces of short prose that move between fiction, auto-fiction, and memoir, forming what Sabbagh describes as an “overall auto-fictive statement” on his adult life to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn excerpt from this book, entitled \"And My Bright Abyss,\" is published here as part of Kulturnest’s Havens Exhibition, where the book’s preoccupations with memory, displacement, inner refuge, and the fragile architectures of belonging resonate deeply with the exhibition’s wider exploration of what it means to seek, imagine, or lose a haven.\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003ci\u003e‘Christ is contingency…’\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eChristian Wiman, \u003ci\u003eMy Bright Abyss\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p4\"\u003eThe three years, 1999-2002, in which I studied PPE at Exeter College, Oxford, have proven to have shaped my career \u003ci\u003eand \u003c\/i\u003emy life thereafter, if perhaps with slightly different ratios.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eI arrived a young enthusiastic Marxist in my views, ready to stoke the revolution.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eAnd to this day, my political views stay very far left of center.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eThat said, and it took me a while to come to terms with this sad fact, by temperament or mindset I am, as I was, very conservative.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eIn some ways, the nervous breakdown that pitted my career at Oxford was just \u003ci\u003eone \u003c\/i\u003eoutcome of the seemingly implacable conflict of those two facets of who and how I am: my views and wishes, and my inborn nature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p4\"\u003eRoughly half-way through my time at Oxford I suffered acutely of paranoia and delusions, which were then, thankfully, caught, diagnosed and nipped in the bud.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eHowever, while the first half of my years at Oxford were, when seen in hindsight, a slippery slope into acute mental illness, the second half was equally debilitated, in terms of both academic and more extracurricular features of undergraduate life, by the heavy medication prescribed me.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eMy time at Oxford was overshadowed, and has, expectedly, overshadowed my pursuant adult life.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eBut there are boons from banes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p4\"\u003eAs a writer, a writer in prose (of different sorts) and in verse, that rather difficult and troubled period of my life has also proved, I suppose, a kind of serendipitous gift.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eAll writers know that good writing is spurred and built and driven by tensions.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eAnd while every writer is different, and while only \u003ci\u003esome \u003c\/i\u003ewriters tend to ‘resolve’ their reigning tensions or preoccupations – others merely ‘exploring’ them without resolution – I do believe that the pivotal period in question was the source of my later, felicitous capacity for what Keats called, ‘negative capability.’ \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p4\"\u003eA highly analytical mind such as my own (though I like to think, with no contradiction whatsoever, I have a good imaginative and intuitive side to me as well), starts-out trying to ‘understand’ everything, to break things down, to hole them analytically.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eHowever, over the course of my life I have realized – in both senses, cognitively as well as experientially – that an ability to accept that one’s mind \u003ci\u003ejust cannot\u003c\/i\u003e grasp everything, be it academic \u003ci\u003eor\u003c\/i\u003e experiential, is the keystone to the potential of being a happier person, to the building of a happier life. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p4\"\u003eMy best book to date, \u003ci\u003eY KNOTS: Short Fictions \u003c\/i\u003e(Liquorice Fish Books, Oct. 2023) is titled the way it is, in part at least, due to this very salutary recognition.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eWhen one is young, brilliant even, one wants with riveted vigor and force to ‘understand,’ to know the answers to all the ‘why’ questions that come to people and pit one’s life.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eThe older one gets, the more life throws at one the unpredictable and the radically contingent, the more one learns to ‘accept.’\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e(To put it idiomatically: ‘shit happens.’)\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eWhile I was an atheist in my Marxist youth (and for Marxist reasons), now, though only ‘philosophically’ religious (not practically) – because I understand that the more compelling, prescient, poignant, if rhetorical, question to ask is ‘\u003ci\u003eWhy not?’\u003c\/i\u003e – I have been able to come to terms with my life the better.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eAnd this sad and indeed tragic recognition would never have freed me, as a man and as a writer, if it hadn’t been for the mishaps of my Oxford years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p3\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Omar Sabbagh","offers":[{"title":"Default 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