a thing of beauty

"The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes."
---von Humboldt.

No, haven't read either Humboldt but liked the cover of this edition because it reminded me of Idris Khan's work. If we could pile up all the words we've spoken-harsh or otherwise-what kind of picture would emerge? If we could superimpose our sentences on to one another, which words would stand out, be distinct?

~~~

Looking for something substantial to read-substantial in the sense of helping me lose myself, pass time, dream a bit as words slip me by. Dip, not plunge, with no hope of ever finishing or learning from. Bellow or Donna Tart. This pale substitute for any real communication, the weight against the complex lightness of the world, or was it the lightness against ...I forget now. Thoroughly modern in your boredom, you look for some space to move about in, lead pencil in hand, to mark out a turn of phrase here, a dazzling insight there, with a few grey lines and crosses (which amounts to a strange Puritanical distillation, not a path in the white fog).

You start. Good. Six pages, before little R races towards me on all fours, a destructive inquisitiveness in her eyes. She touches the tip of the pencil with the tip of her finger with an incredible gentleness.

"Are you writing about me?" she asks shyly.

"No, dear, go back to sleep"

"Are you writing to me, then?"

"Oh, little one! There's more to the life than writing about someone or writing to someone!"

And with that she lunged at Bellow, bending some of the pages with one hand as she clenched her fist in triumph with the other, like a crazy Taleb.

"Then why, o why, do you read little man? And why can you never say what you want to say, except obliquely? Who do you write for then, black sun?"

~~~

Perhaps, when we're half asleep
the same hand that sows the stars
trails across the galactic lyre...
the dying wave reaching our lips
as two or three words.
---D.P.

~~~
Lesley Chamberlain: