21 January 2020

[elflocks]

The month is trotting right along, and next Monday I’ll go in for an MRI (an old comrade mentioned the scene from The Exorcist of the girl getting tests, not the most reassuring comparison nor the same sort of test, and then I learned courtesy of Wikipedia that a man from that scene who was an actual radiographer was also a murderer, and it’s all bloody, terrible, and essentially appropriate, thank you, life), and then if the results are favorable, the surgery is due soon after, on Wednesday, so I reckon a week from now I ought to have an idea whether I’ll be cut open or not. So, the important issue, of course, will be returning my library books in case I’ll soon be minding stitched-up guts.

 

I’ve read two books of short stories, Acts of Worship by Yukio Mishima and The Old Child & Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck, and I’ve enjoyed some parallels, terrible youth and transcendent unbelonging, something cold, something dirty and unsure about being young, or not young at all, about being, about youth as the first metaphor for being, about self sacrifice being a proud second nature, about the expression of the body through routine, about a certain inscrutable avoidance. I also read White as Snow by Tanith Lee, which I wanted to be a treat, but it was also cold, there were also these themes of avoidance, of life coming and coming and it just is, there’s no respite of comforting significance, there is the self and it is the thing to be borne. I’m not a great fan of these fairy tale novels too heavy on the abuse and narrated displaced consciousness of the heroine, where pain and love are received with the similar inevitable lack of focus. 

 

And I read The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition by Rikki Ducornet, which was an utter delight, such candy, a confection so well wrought that it becomes divine in the hands of an old lump of dirt like me. It was what I like, frothy loveliness and terrible ugliness beyond common humanity (and as such, common enough business throughout history), entertaining and nourishing. Food, desire, suffering, all the things important to me.

 

And I read From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón, which I did not know was based on an actual person, a poet and natural scientist and a bit of a wizard. My sort of historical fiction, the approach to poetry, magic, anatomy, religion, nature, and the pursuit of learning and living coming together into something that feels real, into someone who feels real. I also began reading The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya while I was finishing this one up, there was an afternoon I sat in a cafe reading from each, and the parallel was wonderful, remote places and remote times, Iceland in the past and Russia in the future, two characters finding their daily routines in bleak environs, their optimistic charms shining through, magic and poetry as living components in the culture, vibrancy in darkness, hope and comfort as constancies as sure as all the harsh stuff.

 

So, I can take these back to the library, maybe today, since it is so sunny out, or maybe another day, if I am lazy. And I’ve other books to finish, and others I won’t be able to finish. But I do hope I’m lucky enough to be correct in returning what needs to be returned.