I’ve been trying to keep myself busy. Lounging in writing and talking myself half blind at work. It happens, if I talk too much, read too much. I’ve been wandering around the city with students, looking at the stones of the Old Town, stacked up one against the other and on one another, crowding in.
Also: I have been trying to mentally tackle my response to Tamara Faith Berger’s Maidenhead. Which is not purely positive, which requires framing – I can see what the novel is doing, and yet I look at it. I look at it and I can’t. But I will. I will organise some thoughts that are somewhat coherent.
Not helpful: having been reading ‘what should a review do’ style essays here there and everywhere. I feel like the writers of these essays don’t want to rub their whiskers against books, or taste books with an anteater tongue or half close their eyes and imagine the text as it is laid out on the page revealing something of the image within, a rhythm created by shape. Is this style of review Romantic? Or is it reductive? (Even asking this question makes my head hurt).
I have been tilting my head at an angle for weeks. Writing to make right, and not-writing because the contents of my head have all fallen to one side.
What do you do, at times like these?
I have a sudden strong image of words pouring from your ear, like water after swimming. Sometimes, I try backing away from the laptop and peering at the writing like as if it’s someone else’s and I’m sneaking a look.
I let it bake. And then I let it cool on the windowsill. And then I cut a sliver and savor what’s there.