Sitting in my Dr Danesh's chair as he was in and out taking an
extraordinarily long time working on the replacement of an insert that
had failed in the early days of the pandemic. He had removed some
things and installed artificial bone and then the Pandemic became
serious. When it was time to remove my stitches, his nurse said they
weren't quite ready to receive patients; so I removed the stitches
myself. Later when he installed the insert, something went wrong.
But later still, the other day, he at last installed the replacement.
This time I felt something I hadn't before. He not only screwed it into
the bone buy yanked on it to be sure it held. He was making sure he
wouldn't have to install this insert a third time.
I was reading Joan Didion's /Let me tell you what I mean; /then at some
point I decided to stop reading and "enjoy" what was going on.
Since that time I have been getting up from reading at my desk, going
downstairs and walking about looking at the trees, birds and whatever
else is going on. Jessica always goes with me. Sometimes Duffy does as
well.
I walked back into the house earlier, looked at one of the book cases
down stairs, and thought of the progress I was making in replacing the
books I had gotten rid of when I thought I was about to move to Idaho.
By "replacing" I don't mean buying again the same books I had gotten rid
of, but buying books I hadn't read or had read long ago and might want
to read again. Then, standing there looking at the newly purchased
books in the book case, I resolved to feel free not to read anything I
didn't enjoy. I further gave myself permission to walk outside, enjoy
the trees and the sky and spend as long as I liked not reading anything
at all.
I've started and stopped several novels in the past few days, but just
yesterday discovered Alan Russell and his novel /Burning Man. /Detective
Gideon and his K9 Sirius have cornered the Santa Ana serial killer after
he started a fire in the midst of a Southern California Santa Ana wind
storm. Gideon and Sirius are both shot and badly burned but Gideon
captures the killer and becomes a local hero. The chief of police
promises him any job he wants once he's ready to come back to work.
Gideon keeps secret the fact that he has almost nightly nightmares in
which he is back in the fire and being burned once more; Sirius,
unconscious, is once again being carried by Gideon with the killer's
help. The killer wants to leave Sirius, but Gideon threatens (and
means) to shoot him if he tries to run.
Then as Gideon wakes from these nightmares, there is a last bit of dream
that isn't of the fire, something he has been working on, something like
an insightful poem that sheds light on one of his cases. And, in some
instances, the images will be prescient. Later on something will happen
and he will recall the dream and interpret developments in a useful way.
Today I received one of the books I had ordered, /Possession, A Romance,
/by A. S. Byatt, with an introduction by Philip Hensher (in the Everyman
edition). I paused while reading the introduction to write this note.
Hensher writes at one point, "The novel turns on suppressed and
forgotten facts, surfacing through papers, misread poems, letters and
diaries. The truth of the events between Christabel and Ash slowly
comes to light. But the novel never forgets that the past swallows its
truths, too. Perhaps the most intense moments are out of reach of the
documentary reconstruction; when Roland and Maud begin to fall in love,
they take 'a simple picnic. Fresh brown bread, white Wensleydale
cheese, crimson radishes, yellow butter, scarlet tomatoes, round bright
green Granny Smiths and a bottle of mineral water. They took no books.'
The assertion of freedom from literature is cunningly undermined; we can
hardly help but think of Dante's Paolo and Francesca, who say 'quel
giorno finimmo li la lettura'; we are reminded that there are moments in
lives, perhaps key moments, that nobody writes down and which go beyond
words. The novel ends, indeed, with an act of oblivion . . . ."
Perhaps I won't enjoy Byatt's novel and won't read very far into it, but
I am enjoying Hensher's introduction, and I do notice how what he says
nicely dovetails into what I have been thinking in recent days -- as
though my thoughts were a presentment of what I would read in the
introduction (Alan Russell might suggest, if I were his defective). The
more scientific (I am not feeling very scientific at present as you can
see) will object, "Humbug," he will say. "You are always reading books,
articles, reviews. It would be remarkable if you didn't encounter such
coincidences given Microsoft's 'Seven degrees of Separation' theory."
Believe Microsoft if you will, but "there are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in [Microsoft's] philosophy."
Lawrence
