Lipton’s Journal/December 8, 1954/39

From Project Mailer

In a Collier’s article, Mendes-France[1] wrote about climbing a wall after he had studied it for six months from the window of his cell. Studying it that way he saw tiny crevices and cracks which would give him hand-holds up the vertical face. This is an active demonstration of the values of concentration, and the need to liberate oneself from the word. A “wall” means something one cannot climb. But suppose one approaches a wall with the idea that it is climbable. Immediately it is converted in meaning to its opposite—a road, an escape.



note

  1. French Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1954 – 1955, Pierre Mendès-France (1907 – 1982), wrote an account of his 1941 escape from a Vichy prison, “Escape: How I Fled to Freedom,” in the December 24, 1954 issue of Collier’s.