'...and like Lear unable to say if your hands were your own'
---Tim Liardet.
What does that mean? You'll have to ask the old dougal who has probably read Lear a hundred times.
But you get the drift. Most of what you understood-which wasn't much-was always second-hand, derivative...about right. As you age there are no new things to understand (or, more accurately, that you want to understand).Instead, you fumble over the few familiar things, trying to tease out something different...
Everything seems to be moving away from you, at an angle, with greater speed (and for that you are also grateful).
Back in the old country the first days were spent peeling off wallpaper. There were at least eleven distinct layers and it seemed we'd never get to the first wall, primal, pure, the beautiful blank space. Each layer put up was someone's life. How many hands have changed?
We lived without colour for a month and warmed ourselves with coal brought from thick sacks from the garage. There was an old piano, on which false notes were played. Some of the keys were mute and when pressed only produced a dark thud. The central keys were bright, on which we started Once in Royal David's City. Gradually we forgot. We were among the many who disappeared.
Turn the pages, peel them back, finding, not finding, the hand's fixed pose, the word, like love, stuck in your throat....everything is a return, to a broken world, where you are still. I can't even remember the last time I spoke, I mean, spoke. The lost self, the dream, the name you can't recall. That's the least of it.
Tony said: you always have books in your hand; your hand has permanently curled around them, even when you walk. I carry books with me, not to read, but in the way a religious person wears an amulet to ward off evil.
What will you re-read? Cheever's prison book, perhaps when you're out of prison. I have books in hand, I have time on my hands.
---Tim Liardet.
What does that mean? You'll have to ask the old dougal who has probably read Lear a hundred times.
But you get the drift. Most of what you understood-which wasn't much-was always second-hand, derivative...about right. As you age there are no new things to understand (or, more accurately, that you want to understand).Instead, you fumble over the few familiar things, trying to tease out something different...
Everything seems to be moving away from you, at an angle, with greater speed (and for that you are also grateful).
Back in the old country the first days were spent peeling off wallpaper. There were at least eleven distinct layers and it seemed we'd never get to the first wall, primal, pure, the beautiful blank space. Each layer put up was someone's life. How many hands have changed?
We lived without colour for a month and warmed ourselves with coal brought from thick sacks from the garage. There was an old piano, on which false notes were played. Some of the keys were mute and when pressed only produced a dark thud. The central keys were bright, on which we started Once in Royal David's City. Gradually we forgot. We were among the many who disappeared.
Turn the pages, peel them back, finding, not finding, the hand's fixed pose, the word, like love, stuck in your throat....everything is a return, to a broken world, where you are still. I can't even remember the last time I spoke, I mean, spoke. The lost self, the dream, the name you can't recall. That's the least of it.
Tony said: you always have books in your hand; your hand has permanently curled around them, even when you walk. I carry books with me, not to read, but in the way a religious person wears an amulet to ward off evil.
What will you re-read? Cheever's prison book, perhaps when you're out of prison. I have books in hand, I have time on my hands.
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