from A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

I didn't see myself spending the rest of my days at that bend in the river, like Mahesh and the others. In my own mind I separated myself from them. I still thought of myself as a man just passing through. But where was the good place? I couldn't say. I never thought constructively about it. I was just waiting for some illumination to come to me, to guide me to the good place and the "life" I was still waiting for.

threads

Watching a film adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room With A View, I recall the sensation of carrying objects through books.

I think about his love of Beethoven, how it rises to the surface here and there to speak. How as a reader I touch these things with my hands. The echoes of the caves of Marabar. I carry them, and trace the colors of their wakes. It is a physical sensation.

reading, even calvino seems kind

Things are lifted up out of the faces of the world, brought to roost in one home intangibly, through suggestion. That is how I feel about reading. It is all so improbable. That out of all these conversations, a few words could be lifted out to create a pattern. Not just a pattern, but music. A movement that picks up and leaves off, like a generous teacher. Finding you, leading you, letting you go. Most improbable of all though, that someone once thought it would be a good thing to do in the first place. What need did that person see? Or perhaps it was joy, confusion, heartbreak.



I guess I thought about this because I wanted something to speak, and things are always speaking. With voices! That is love.

Levin

What was it this time that carried me away?

Levin, from Anna Karenina, is delightful, because he is earnest and blind. He wants what he already has, he protests against what cannot be divided from himself, he walks about in a cloud of strict delusion only to succumb to an embrace with what he has so vehemently pretended did not matter.

He loves. He questions love, denies it, loves again.

Naming the Animals

Walking on Water
Madeleine L'Engle

Writing a story is a way of naming something. Using the entire range of your vocabulary maintains your freedom and ability to call forth the ideas of things. The sharper the language, the closer it skims the surface of actual objects or feelings. Writers try to do this in all kinds of ways. Marianne Moore's pangolin, Robert Hass' blackberries, ...and novels, which embark on their lengthy voyages. Docked by a title.

Looking at a painting or hearing a piece of music can feel as though something in you is called forth and named.

Like Adam naming the animals. We can become known.