Saturday 22 January 2011

'extra' by yijun li

 i started again listening to audio files. among them some short stories. this one filled my head from aberdeen to abroath last night. and resonated all the way on to glasgow.
rose tremain reads 'extra' by yiyun li. the audiofile is here.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

stuffed

"Are you not pleased you stuck with it?"
The three-year old isn't quite sure though. Now she has looked closely at the colour of the stuffed cheetah. She has also continued - three times over - with its spots. All on her mother's encouragement.
Spot and spot again. The educational advice.


All the while gulls are circling above our heads on wire.

Sunday 16 January 2011

a good plan

is deserving of whole-hearted abandonment. pursuit and dismissal. so close together.

part of my current practice (if less so plan) led me in search of the proper - appropriate and fitting - words to this. if i had known that language could LOOK like this, i think my horror of german in school would have quickly turned to something else. no: make no mistake, it is not about the wholeness of all that is one. but about the relations that exist between them. that they - as common in dictionary or thesaurus - should merely exist in list form is a cruel lie. a betrayal of their complexity. and if my rather literal mind had dared to venture beyond those lists, my encounter with language and meaning could easily have taken a different turn.

now, the thesaurus - in its animated unfolding - offers up the possibilities and exclusions of what i am searching after in those parts of my mind that speak neither german nor english yet are far from unintelligible.

thus, while making another plan for the year and the next, i am marvelling at the necessity i feel for precisely such and all the while am eying up their abandonment should plan and practice take a different turn.



the animation in time - the world of word associations that disappears as the new ones appears is lost here. also lost - while apparently given - are much of the german words, their translations and proximity to others. but... both are small losses.

Wednesday 5 January 2011

bright noise

they occur frequently throughout here. in particular in my winter posts. my winter posts are the most similar ones throughout. they are of night walks, snow flurries and flurry stars. the same fields, the same paths. and once in a while, the same one, two or three figures. two is the more common number of them.

like in this one here.



the night was perfect. clear. ice cold. a rather full moon lit up the fields and the dark forest. it was the sharpest night bright you can imagine. and still: the photo in all its hazy noise didn't take note. didn't listen carefully enough. or was it my hand, eye or memory that didn't get it?