Another air pocket: been reading chunks of Thoreau’s Walden Pond, which I found my way to courtesy of RLS essay on him in familiar studies of men and books, a palm sized red book (cosmopolitan magazine New York, a medallion edition, whatever that means) which I picked up by chance in a charity shop last week for a quarter. I collect palm sized books because I find them very comfortable to read while I am walking. I am a small person, so my hands aren’t terribly big by any standard, but I find these old books very agreeable visually as well. I have no idea why. This one has very few paragraphs indented in it, if any.
Others I have are from the Modern Library I think. I’ll have to examine them.
I enjoy “reading out” from writers, I also enjoy the maze and circuitous route by which some books or even parts of books arrive in our lives. Often in the last year I have found books discarded on the side of the road! And sometimes it will be a title someone has mentioned in passing and eh voila there it is looking up from the pavement at me. P’haps that’s why I tend to look down a great deal these days.
Chanced upon books via writers or other books or mentions or because you tripped over it on the bus or found it cover less at a jumble sale. Post your tales in comments …..
When George Bataille lost his funding for Documents, (just after Breton launched his attacks) he embarked on a number of projects including that he wanted to publish a weekly magazine on universal history. I read this in Stuart Kendall’s red book about Bataille that I must buy. I borrowed it from the library who demanded its return. It is the red book that has raised me up the most in all the red books I recall reading.
I surrendered it without noting the exact quote.
I love that Bataille tasked himself, in the midst of a depressing and difficult time for him, with .. er.. universal history.
Rhotic 18: tinn
Ding,
Go raibh mile a cailin is deasa ar fud na tír.
Deacair na seachtaine, ach rudaí níos fearr a fháil. Merci drugaí agus dochtúirí agus amigas.
Tommy bás. go brónach. Sílim go mbeidh sé deacair ar mo mháthair.
Na Cluichí Oilimpeacha ag déanamh demented dom.
labhairt go luath…x
Driving down the hill (road) on Boundary in the 5 blocks before you cross Hastings there are the most staggering pylons. They remind me of the big auld Tripods. They could nearly lift up their legs and tramp down the hill. It’s funny I never noticed the source of power so much in the city til I saw them today. I always observe power sources in rural locations because I am inevitably curious to see who is off the grid.
It’s odd because if you say walk across a bridge in the dark in the city, inevitably the ditty-dotty lights on the North Shore (she says trying to rem can you see the N Shore from bridges?) … however you see them, those ditty dotty lights all up the North Shore til the rock star stream on Grouse grab your attention.
I once had a very funny experience with a spotlight when on tour with my play. I arrived at this tiny venue to discover they’d rented a single light that U2 might have needed for Wembley… but that I had to plead with them to turn off. The conversation went “but we rented it, but I am the volunteer lighting man,” to which I could only respond politely “but I am completely blinded by it and can see nothing and will end up in the lap of the audience.” The play on this occasion was being performed at lunchtime in a non theatre venue and that light could have literally guided the Sealink ferry safely into Dun Laoghaire from inside said building 45 miles away. Touching tho’ that anyone would rent anything in my honour whatever the wattage.
OK so one of the air pockets I intend to retreat to and I have had an interest in it previously (dotted across this blog since 2006) is good old neuro science and neuro-surgery.
Yesterday I peeled potatoes and made a reasonable lamb shepherds pie while watching a film about brain surgery performed under local anaesthetic. I credit that film with vastly improving my cookery.
Plus it reminded me of the significance of vacuum in removing tumours and have to confess have always gotten great comfort from hoovering, except my one hoover calamity at age 5 that resulted in a split lip.
Viaduct: Gordon Brown
PHOTO COPYRIGHT GORDON BROWN.
Ballochmyle Viaduct over the river Ayr (Gordon Brown) / CC BY-SA 2.0
Trains, Zola
A second spot we might consider is text that discuss and offer railways and trains. Zola comes to mind, but which is the name of his novel with the trains… tiocfaidh se aris….
Always had a fascination with viaducts, and road building in my youth.
post note: La bete humaine (bete needs a hat on it)
As the Olympics encroaches on us, which it continues to, I am thinking of places we can go to in literature. Air pockets.
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household is my first consideration since the main character spends, to my unreliable remembering, a significant amount of time under the ground. I read it at sixteen and found the prospect of “the underground” utterly oxygenating.