There are fewer and fewer places that I recognize or where I can feel comfortable. Am I talking to myself? That's how people look at me, as if I'm not from around here. Gosh, I've finally become Jewish...
You copy out a few passages of JB for anton. Something simple and reassured in the writing. The feeling of being at home, right there where you ought to be. That always had more appeal than the edgy existential stuff. The book I ordered (some poems recommended by someone) won't come through now because it has been "damaged in the process of shipping" (if this was a face-to-face exchange I would have said: "knock two ponds off and I'll still take it". Computers are still way behind human beings!).
At last you get away from the masses circling around in the shopping mall. A bit early for the Hajj, you think! You eventually make your way to a small Foyles and here, finally, you feel you can talk to someone (at least nominally) as an equal or without having to worry about eye contact.
I buy some C.S. Lewis for little r (even though she's too young..actually, I'd like to re-read it) and a purple kaleidoscope. Fruit scones and sunflower seeds. For lunch I make kedegree (which is, I think, an anglicized version of 'kichri') and Baba Ghanoush. At home you watch all the re-runs. Morse, for example. I've seen this particular episode at least four times. This inability to let go and move on is worrying, but not too worrying (a friend once watched Top Gun 21 times and he wasn't even gay!). Then there was a perfect moment where you caught a re-run of a 1983 game (Brighton vs Norwich) on 'The Big Match'. Television is brilliant at insulating you from the real world. Being There. "Winter is a time to conserve. But Spring will eventually arrive."
Bronk: The Winter Mind. One for later. Skellig.
The Wonder Years...an iconic show if ever there was one. One of the best episodes is when a girl in braces falls for K...there's chemistry, there's this feeling and image that floats beyond your gaze, and it's the world of togetherness and it all makes sense, a growing in lightness, another level of life, an understanding that comes from a life lived, the questions blunted. But it isn't to be. And no-one knows why or can say why. No-one knows how it turns out or how it would have (which reminds you of a great short story by Alice Munro). That's the wonder, isn't it? You haven't got a clue, Watson.
Time pulls you in two directions, drags you down in the dust. Every day has felt like a preparation for departure; every day has also, miraculously, felt like a coming home. One process shortens your days, the other draws them out. You've lost track.
A friend recites a poem:
We were beautiful once.
We were, weren't we?
The catalogue of aches and pains, uncharted. Grammar and any sense of structure but a dim memory now. You'll get down to something raw eventually. The anchor of the world...Your hands thick and clumsy. Your hair: the black inherits the grey (a bit of Akhmatova, and why not?). You'll be in luck if God has a sense of humour. Just you and Knulp.
The Wonder Years: you sometimes wonder if you didn't become a ghost in 1983. The moles become more predominant. And Jesus-don't flinch now-you have hair growing from your ears. My ears are long, says a Tiawanese friend-which is a sign of spirituality. Are you sure it isn't just old age [he asks, tentatively]? The knees... I could write pages on them. And my nose! There is no truth to my nose.
A poem from the poetry that will never reach us, that got damaged on the way, or lost or something.
what do you need? a tree a house to
gauge how great how small our human life
how great how small when you look up to the top of the tree
and get lost in the lush luxuriant green
how great how small when you think how short
your life compared with the life of trees
you need a tree you need a house
not all for yourself just a corner a roof
to sit to think to sleep to dream
to write to be silent to see your friend
the stars grass flower sky
—Friederike Mayröcker
It's fantastic that you can type in a word, a word like 'shelter', say, and see what comes up, what is retrieved from the store. Yes, I know, a villager at heart to be amazed by such things. What does it point to? Not some great arch-angel who has recorded all we've said, nor a Stasi agent with his bony fingers in our books but, rather, the possibility that some words will not be lost. All time is irredeemable-except for the time that isn't. What time is left?
You copy out a few passages of JB for anton. Something simple and reassured in the writing. The feeling of being at home, right there where you ought to be. That always had more appeal than the edgy existential stuff. The book I ordered (some poems recommended by someone) won't come through now because it has been "damaged in the process of shipping" (if this was a face-to-face exchange I would have said: "knock two ponds off and I'll still take it". Computers are still way behind human beings!).
At last you get away from the masses circling around in the shopping mall. A bit early for the Hajj, you think! You eventually make your way to a small Foyles and here, finally, you feel you can talk to someone (at least nominally) as an equal or without having to worry about eye contact.
I buy some C.S. Lewis for little r (even though she's too young..actually, I'd like to re-read it) and a purple kaleidoscope. Fruit scones and sunflower seeds. For lunch I make kedegree (which is, I think, an anglicized version of 'kichri') and Baba Ghanoush. At home you watch all the re-runs. Morse, for example. I've seen this particular episode at least four times. This inability to let go and move on is worrying, but not too worrying (a friend once watched Top Gun 21 times and he wasn't even gay!). Then there was a perfect moment where you caught a re-run of a 1983 game (Brighton vs Norwich) on 'The Big Match'. Television is brilliant at insulating you from the real world. Being There. "Winter is a time to conserve. But Spring will eventually arrive."
Bronk: The Winter Mind. One for later. Skellig.
The Wonder Years...an iconic show if ever there was one. One of the best episodes is when a girl in braces falls for K...there's chemistry, there's this feeling and image that floats beyond your gaze, and it's the world of togetherness and it all makes sense, a growing in lightness, another level of life, an understanding that comes from a life lived, the questions blunted. But it isn't to be. And no-one knows why or can say why. No-one knows how it turns out or how it would have (which reminds you of a great short story by Alice Munro). That's the wonder, isn't it? You haven't got a clue, Watson.
Time pulls you in two directions, drags you down in the dust. Every day has felt like a preparation for departure; every day has also, miraculously, felt like a coming home. One process shortens your days, the other draws them out. You've lost track.
A friend recites a poem:
We were beautiful once.
We were, weren't we?
The catalogue of aches and pains, uncharted. Grammar and any sense of structure but a dim memory now. You'll get down to something raw eventually. The anchor of the world...Your hands thick and clumsy. Your hair: the black inherits the grey (a bit of Akhmatova, and why not?). You'll be in luck if God has a sense of humour. Just you and Knulp.
The Wonder Years: you sometimes wonder if you didn't become a ghost in 1983. The moles become more predominant. And Jesus-don't flinch now-you have hair growing from your ears. My ears are long, says a Tiawanese friend-which is a sign of spirituality. Are you sure it isn't just old age [he asks, tentatively]? The knees... I could write pages on them. And my nose! There is no truth to my nose.
A poem from the poetry that will never reach us, that got damaged on the way, or lost or something.
what do you need? a tree a house to
gauge how great how small our human life
how great how small when you look up to the top of the tree
and get lost in the lush luxuriant green
how great how small when you think how short
your life compared with the life of trees
you need a tree you need a house
not all for yourself just a corner a roof
to sit to think to sleep to dream
to write to be silent to see your friend
the stars grass flower sky
—Friederike Mayröcker
It's fantastic that you can type in a word, a word like 'shelter', say, and see what comes up, what is retrieved from the store. Yes, I know, a villager at heart to be amazed by such things. What does it point to? Not some great arch-angel who has recorded all we've said, nor a Stasi agent with his bony fingers in our books but, rather, the possibility that some words will not be lost. All time is irredeemable-except for the time that isn't. What time is left?
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