June 19, 2005
Fragrance
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Over the last year or so I've found that I've begun to read less and less online, unless it's on a subject on which I need to do some research, or at best, the blogs of people I know in person. It's perhaps a kind of intrinsic withdrawal from information overload; one feels bombarded, and it becomes a tedious process of constantly having to sift between that which may be useful or otherwise.
I've never always earned enough to buy books, though somehow I managed through my student days with a small collection. All that changed when I began working full-time, and suddenly, there was a lovely way to fit in reading time — the commute to and from work.
By the time I left Melbourne almost three years ago, I had lost track of the number of books I owned. I'd also begun a steady collection of "to-reads" which I hadn't manage to go through before I'd left. However, I moved to Montréal quite a while before my Melbourne books followed suit, so until a handful of weeks ago, I hadn't seen a good two-thirds of my books for almost three years. The other third, you might have concluded, simply grew out of my time here in Montréal.
The time I'm making up for not reading quite so much online, I've gone back to my books. Reading a book is forever an intimate process; the touch, the smell, the sanctity of words on a page always virgin to your eye until you turn the previous page over. And the time I spend away from the deafening, fast-paced static of the digital world, I suddenly find I have the time to mull over details, to pay attention to the song being sung at the back of my mind, to the wisdom of words written to last.
Posted by sniffles at 11:38 PM | Comments (5)The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of the writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it, or having drawn the conclusion, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of irridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their next book is going to be their best, and will not acknowledge that they are prevented by their present way of life from ever creating anything different.
Every excusion into journalism, broadcasting, propaganda and writing or the films, however grandiose, will be doomed to disappointment. To put our best into these is another folly, since thereby we condemn good ideas as well as bad to oblivion. It is in the nature of such work not to last, and it should never be undertaken. Writers engrossed in any literary task which is not an assault on perfection are their own dupes, and, unless these self-flatterers are content to dismiss such activity as their contribution to the war effort, they might as well be peeling potatoes.
"The Unquiet Grave", Palinurus.
The three of us were walking out of a café into the stifling humidity of the night, when two young men who were heading in held the door open for us. One of them said, "Moshi moshi." And I did something I've always wanted to do at times like these: I yelled out "Wrong language!" as they slithered into the air-conditioned shelter of the café.
Posted by sniffles at 11:27 PM | Comments (16)Posted by sniffles at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)Phoebe was a marvelous dancer. Her long slim arms snaked and syncopated in mysterious choreography. With unabashed admiration Lewis mirrored her movements. She put her hands on his shoulders and drew him close. "You know what's the best advice I ever got about dancing?" she yelled over the music. "A friend told me this. He said, 'You know those gestures the stewardesses make during the safety speech? They point out the emergency exits.'" Phoebe extended her arms in a wide funnel and her hands became blades, slicing towards the far corners of the room. "'They show you where the life preservers are.'" She stretched her arms directly over her head and pointed at the life preservers with pulsing index fingers. "My friend said to me, 'We have to take our culture's eloquent gestures where we find them.'" She dipped, and her hands cut through the air like fins. "He's dead now." She crossed her wrists in front of her face, in what was perhaps a stylized gesture of mourning, embracing the memory of her dead friend.
As his clams sizzled in the wine, and Michael Jackson lamented that it was too late, Lewis dropped his knees, and raised his hands, and sliced the air. Could that possibly be the best advice about dancing anyone would ever give him? He pointed his index fingers at the life preservers. He reached up and jerked down hard on the emergency oxygen supply. He cupped one hand loosely over his mouth and passed the other behind his head, as if adjusting the elastic strap, and he breathed in deeply. He kept dancing like that for a few bars, with his eyes shut, and his arms cradling his skull.
— "Safety Speech", Cynthia Baughman (from "Getting It On: A Condom Reader").
Perception sharp like the glimmer on the sliver of silver that adorns her ear, her hair jet black, like mine, except I was born with it and wasn't given the option to change. Words dropped like abandoned fruit, to be picked up by another to savour, to taste, to gorge upon. Good conversation is like a bountiful orchard.
When I left, I smelled like smoked-out memories suffocated by history. The air spelled the end of yet another day, another anonymous day in a record that no one is keeping. Deep in the night of the tunnels, demons sometimes creep up upon you if you don't stand guard. I fought my battles, armed with a book of short stories on condoms.
Do you count days? I count days. I measure the hours by the beats of songs and the slow release of flavour at the tail-end sip of a wine.
I let myself be carried away. "Be involved," he had said. And perhaps that's the simplest philosophy of all.
The wait is finally over and I spent hours sifting through belongings, reconciling parts of myself spread thinly over the last ten years. Throwing away the superfluous, the unnecessary, things which ought to be forgotten so that one has no choice but to move on. I have too many books, I keep too many possibilities and I don't own enough clothes. I'd bookmarked a passage in an old book that I'd read once, remembered, but was never quite able to read again. It was about throwing out old tea in your teacup so you can fill it with new tea.
I try to make sure my days remain perpetually fresh. I wear a dozen red roses like an advertising placard, "Look at me, I am loved". They kept asking if it were a special occasion, and the truth was much too long to explain, so I simply said, "No" and hid behind the explosion of red.
Posted by sniffles at 10:46 PM | Comments (3)