My face and the world. I see it now, remember it when a voice calls my name.
The world in her face.
The word and the world, branches of the same tree.
~
You saw A, propped up on the bed, blood stains on his shirt which was open at the front; a third heart attack. They called it an "angina" but I insisted on calling it a heart attack. The old mockery never deserting him.
There is something profoundly sad at seeing him in this state. All the friends who call look old and worried themselves, and secretly wonder to themselves: how does he survive. Which is to say, really, how do any of us.
F comments that A now looks like Foucault without the mind. A doesn't know who Foucault is and lets it pass. The restaurant will probably fold, there are lots of things to think about. "I've never studied physiology but the heart is only three inches big, isn't it?"
What use is factual knowledge today?
'The wind is full of black dust
It scours the names of the gravestones
and etches this day
into us.'
~~
'As the eyesight gets weaker,
you take an extra step
to make out your friends.'
This is true. I now hesitate before waving to someone until I'm up closer and can tell who it is. I waved to a student thinking it was a colleague. Before, I hugged a woman and spoke to her for fifteen minutes before a friend told me she wasn't who I thought she was.
"Who is she, then?"
"I don't know, but it isn't who you think it is"
I wasn't even drunk. It suddenly clicked and I remembered that she was indeed someone else but couldn't for the life of me remember her name.
The other day I met a student at the gym and asked him, somewhat surprised, if he wasn't finishing up this year.
"Sir, I graduated six years ago."
"Oh."
'Names with i
or names with o,
the effort to remember.'
Everything that cannot be put under 'blue' or 'Rothko' or 'stories' or 'Philosophy' or 'art' comes under the heading of Life.
'Someone with a is
addressing me now.'
Here we wait, idle, like monks with time on their hands.
{Lines by Gunter Eich, Angina Days)
The world in her face.
The word and the world, branches of the same tree.
~
You saw A, propped up on the bed, blood stains on his shirt which was open at the front; a third heart attack. They called it an "angina" but I insisted on calling it a heart attack. The old mockery never deserting him.
There is something profoundly sad at seeing him in this state. All the friends who call look old and worried themselves, and secretly wonder to themselves: how does he survive. Which is to say, really, how do any of us.
F comments that A now looks like Foucault without the mind. A doesn't know who Foucault is and lets it pass. The restaurant will probably fold, there are lots of things to think about. "I've never studied physiology but the heart is only three inches big, isn't it?"
What use is factual knowledge today?
'The wind is full of black dust
It scours the names of the gravestones
and etches this day
into us.'
~~
'As the eyesight gets weaker,
you take an extra step
to make out your friends.'
This is true. I now hesitate before waving to someone until I'm up closer and can tell who it is. I waved to a student thinking it was a colleague. Before, I hugged a woman and spoke to her for fifteen minutes before a friend told me she wasn't who I thought she was.
"Who is she, then?"
"I don't know, but it isn't who you think it is"
I wasn't even drunk. It suddenly clicked and I remembered that she was indeed someone else but couldn't for the life of me remember her name.
The other day I met a student at the gym and asked him, somewhat surprised, if he wasn't finishing up this year.
"Sir, I graduated six years ago."
"Oh."
'Names with i
or names with o,
the effort to remember.'
Everything that cannot be put under 'blue' or 'Rothko' or 'stories' or 'Philosophy' or 'art' comes under the heading of Life.
'Someone with a is
addressing me now.'
Here we wait, idle, like monks with time on their hands.
{Lines by Gunter Eich, Angina Days)
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