the death of the heart

If ever I was tempted to read a book for its title alone, then it would be this one. I love the first words, the first page of a novel, because they draw you in; they're like a film trailer or a band striking up before the actual performance, or the moment you adjust yourself and settle in back home, the door firmly closed, the lights blaring away, time kept at bay. Events in the world as distant as the stars-which sounds kind of heartless (Hume's little finger and all that)...

The crackle of the loudspeaker before it starts; the maulvi clearing his throat, preparing himself. That registers, but ever so faintly, like the slow return to zero of the galvanometer needle and its shadow. You lose track, eat when you can. People come and go.

The other day, you bought Moveable Feast, and since there wasn't much traffic, and because of its size, you started to read the blurbs on the back as you drove with one hand. Which is kind of crazy, especially as you're not that fond of books after all! The dougal, on the other hand, has read everything under the sun.

-Yesterday, lunch with your old friend, canny and wise, as worldly-wise as one can imagine. He has this incredible (and irritating) habit of being able to look someone up and down and then form an accurate judgement of their life, their unique problems, their soundness. A bit like Sherlock Holmes.

But he just wants to discuss his 'woman problem'...the problem being that he's addicted to them, even though he can't admit it. But because he can see so clearly, so uncompromisingly,he recognizes there's something wrong, that someone with half his strength would have become unmoored if they'd gone through what he's gone through. Addicted not to the love of women, I should add. Not much point asking 'where did it begin?' or trying to describe the boundaries of desire. Each man is an island. And so is each woman.

What can I say? I shrug my shoulders. "Go and see a psychiatrist...a female psychiatrist."-

The mystery of the opening up; a beautiful face glimpsed. You move, north by north-west. Uncharted territory; the only belongings you carry with you are the shoddy ones you wear. Your hands as dry as the pages. You forget all the reviewers and critics that you so despise. There's no telling only, at best, a showing, a pointing to. Commas and breathlessness.

The momentum of the inner world.

Shall we talk about the end, then? A good ending, the perfecting ending, when you close the book in your hands, and just sit still with the sad realization hanging around you that you have to return to life, ordinary life. You think to yourself: what the fuck was that?! Just the death of the heart, or something like it.