Joacadeamine » personal

Povestea unui tatuaj

Octavian — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 05:57:03 +0000

(Acesta este un post personal. Dacă ai intrat aici pentru o sugestie de lectură, poți să mergi la arhiva de lecturi.)

Nu știu când mi-a venit prima dată ideea unui tatuaj. Cum tatuajele se află (încă) în categoria de subiecte care mai ridică suspiciuni și celor pe care îi considerai open-minded, doar ca să-ți verifice teoria că open-minded e o chestie circumstanțială, valabilă doar până la următoarea încrâncenare, n-am vorbit despre intenția mea de a-mi face un tatuaj decât unui număr redus de persoane în ultimii … 16 ani. Am avut timp suficient să mă gândesc dacă personalitatea mea îmi va spune după primul tatuaj că mai am suficientă piele pentru încă niște zeci de tatuaje (sigur nu) și am avut suficient timp să caut și să găsesc ceva ce vreau să am pe piele de acum până când … well, până când nu o să mă mai întrebe nimeni ce-a fost în capul meu pentru că nu o să mai pot să răspund.

Primul tatuaj pe care mi l-am dorit vreodată a fost un pinguin. Care alunecă. Nu știu cum se desenează un pinguin care alunecă, dar sunt la fel de convins cum sunt că nu trebuie să mă auto-tatuez că există persoane care știu să deseneze pinguini care alunecă. În fine. Visul tatuajului cu pinguin e mai complex (și care a făcut persoanele cărora le-am povestit asta să chicotească) pentru că e vorba nu de un pinguin, ci de doi, în fine, nu ambii pe pielea mea, ci unul pe mâna mea și celălalt pe mâna persoanei cu care o să-mi petrec toată viața, așa, doi pinguini, pe braț, care alunecă amândoi, unul către celălalt. Când m-am trezit dintr-o reverie suficient de lungă să-mi dau seama că numărul de dimineți în care eu & iubitul meu ne vom trezi cu pinguinii side by side alunecând unul către celălalt se reduce pe zi ce trece, mi-am zis că a sosit momentul să-mi păstrez un braț în acest scop, dar să nu renunț nici la visul meu de tatuaj personal (celălalt, cu pinguinul, este tatuajul meu interpersonal). Pentru că sunt o persoană practică, m-am gândit că mie îmi place să dorm la margine, în situația în care vorbim de un pat la perete, drept care am păstrat brațul drept pentru tatuajul cu pinguin și sunt gata să-mi brand-uiesc brațul stâng cu un tatuaj. Păstrez deci un braț și pentru tatuajul pe care sper să am ocazia să-l fac împreună cu o persoană care nu are nimic împotriva tatuajelor, are brațul stâng disponibil și mă va iubi pe termen lung.

Așadar azi mă tatuez! Mesajul pe care îl vreau pe mine nu e schimbător, e valabil întotdeauna, cel puțin în mintea mea, și unde mai pui că la sugestia unui artist va conține și ceva drăguț pe lângă text, un licurici! Asta face tatuajul absolut adorabil și chiar fără licurici, doar cu textul pe care l-am ales, “There Is a Light that Never Goes Out” tot adorabil e. Mesajul provine desigur din melodia omonimă de la the Smiths, cea care-mi oferă și food for thought pentru alegerea co-tatuatului cu pinguini cu versurile triste, dar frumoase, cum numai the Smith știu să-mi cânte, care spun: “And if a double-decker bus/Crashes into us/To die by your side/Is such a heavenly way to die/And if a ten ton truck/Kills the both of us/To die by your side/Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine“. Tatuajul sper să fie prezentabil până la ziua mea (pentru că așa mi-l doresc, birthday tattoo, să pot să-i pun o fundă roșie și mare și perfectă și să-l desfac de ziua mea. Poate chiar în fiecare an.)

L.E. Iată-l!

2012

Octavian — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:42:45 +0000

Nu îmi plac urările și poate fiecare zi a anului e la fel de propice pentru urări ca 01-ian, dar mi-aș dori să aveți cu toții o zi în care să citiți cu cineva povestea de mai jos. Povestea este “The Runaway Bunny“, a fost scrisă de Margaret Wise Brown, ilustrată în ediția originală din 1942 de către Clement Hurd. Parte din poveste o puteți asculta vizionând sau revizionând “Wit“. Piesa “Wit” a lui Margaret Edson (unica ei piesă și de altfel un Pulitzer) va fi jucată din ian-12 la Manhattan Theatre Club, rolul principal al profesoarei Vivian Bearing fiind jucat de Cynthia Nixon. Ascultați-o vorbind despre piesă aici.

Sau puteți asculta ”The Runaway Bunny“, concert pentru vioară, orchestrată de Glen Roven. În 2008, compoziția a fost lansată la Sony, în interpretarea lui Ittai Shapira și cu Brooke Shields în rolul naratorului. Un fragment din compoziție se găsește mai jos:

“The Runaway Bunny” Concerto

Acestea fiind spuse, la mulți ani!

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”

“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny, “I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.”

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother, “I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

“If you become a fisherman,” said the little bunny, “I will become a rock on the mountain high above you.”

“If you become a rock on the mountain high above me,” said his mother, “I will be a mountain climber, and I will climb to where you are.”

The little bunny said, “I will be a crocus in a hidden garden.”

“If you become a crocus in a hidden garden,” said his mother, “I will be a gardener. And I will find you.”

“If you are a gardener and find me,” said the little bunny, “I will be a bird and fly away from you.”

“If you become a bird and fly away from me,” said his mother, “I will be a tree that you come home to.”

The little bunny said, “I will join the circus and fly away on a flying trapeze.”

“If you go flying on a flying trapeze,” said his mother, “I will be a tightrope walker, and I will walk across the air to you.”

“If you become a tightrope walker and walk across the air,” said the bunny, “I will become a little boy and run into a house.”

“If you become a little boy and run into a house,” said the mother bunny, “I will become your mother and catch you in my arms and hug you.”

“Shucks,” said the bunny, “I might just as well  stay where I am and be your little bunny.”

And so he did. “Have a carrot,” said the mother bunny.

Mai stau puțin la joacă

Octavian — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:39:53 +0000

Azi sau mâine. Va dispărea numărul de telefon al mamei mele din last calls și nu va mai apărea niciodată. Am încercat să găsesc setarea cu care modifici numărul de contacte afișate în secțiunea aceasta fără niciun rezultat. E doar încă unul din lucrurile inevitabile care pur și simplu te înnebunesc când se întâmplă, dar care probabil nu înseamnă nimic. E doar o urmă, că aș putea tresări și avea din nou cinci ani pentru că mă sună mama.

Altcineva a spus asta, că numărul de urme pe care cineva le lasă în urma sa, fizice și tangibile, nu o să fie niciodată suficient de mare. Nu cred că aș fi fost resemnat dacă acum mă uitam la un documentar cu mama, sau mă plimbam într-un muzeu, aceeași neputință și același dor m-ar fi cuprins clipă de clipă. Iar urme există, și le voi descoperi zi de zi. Ieri de pildă am citit din caietul de rețete al mamei, scris de mână cu o caligrafie pe care am admirat-o întotdeauna și pe care am vrut în egală măsură să o imit și de care să mă îndepărtez. Și tot ieri am găsit o marionetă pe care a făcut-o când aveam una din multele boli ale copilăriei și care mă fascinează până și azi. Intactă, fără nicio cusătură desfăcută, la fel de vie cum mi-o aminteam. Lucruri se găsesc în fiecare zi. Oameni nu.

Știu că de fiecare dată când o să deschid ușa apartamentului o să le văd pe multele mele mame trecând prin fața ochilor. E inevitabil. Pe mama care m-a învățat să scriu, pe mama care m-a învățat să iubesc ce iubesc azi, pe mama care a plâns când am încercat să fiu bărbat și nu am plâns eu spunându-i “m-a părăsit“, pe mama care știa să scurteze zilele de iarnă în care rămâneam înzăpeziți în casă și pe mama care nu se culca până nu-mi corecta caligrafia. Pe mama care m-a învățat să fac cele mai bune deserturi și cu care nu a trebuit niciodată să discut politică. Și celelalte de mii de mame pe care am avut bucuria și onoarea să le cunosc. Stația lor în câmpul meu vizual este la fel de inevitabilă.

Sunt multe lucruri pe care cineva le poate spune atunci când cineva drag pleacă. Și multe lucruri care rămân nespuse, așa, din viețile noastre și ale mamelor noastre care nu ajung în cărțile de istorie. Aș vrea să le pun pe toate pe hârtie de frică să nu le uit într-o bună zi. Inevitabil ar fi, în cazul acesta, să nu uit.

Altcineva a spus asta, mamă, mai stau puțin la joacă și apoi vin și eu sus.

Câteva gânduri despre distanţă

Octavian — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:54:18 +0000

Dacă aţi vizitat anul acesta blogul meu, probabil că aţi văzut că unul dintre proiectele pe care le sprijin este minunatul Love Issue, ajuns în septembrie la #5 cu un esenţial ghid vizual despre distanţă. Tare mi-a plăcut ideea şi vă invit ca pe lângă poveşti şi bileţele scrise la distanţă şi fotografiile despre distanţe geografice, anatomice şi sociale să citiţi şi câteva gânduri despre distanţă aparţinând subsemnatului sub titlul ‘I Don’t Know the First Thing about Distance‘ (p. 4-7). Click!

Dragostea este un ecosistem ca oricare altul

Octavian — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:50:19 +0000

Pentru că zilele acestea am citit povești și pentru că am vrut să recitesc textul lui Jeanette Winterson despre Gertrude Stein (“All I Know About Gertrude Stein“, apărut în Granta: the Magazine of New Writing, #115 (The F Word) pentru vara 2011 (varianta online o puteți citi aici, v-o recomand cu căldură), mi-am amintit de o altă contribuție a lui Jeanette Winterson la Granta intitulată “The Agony of Intimacy” apărută în #110 (Sex). Lectură plăcută!

The Agony of Intimacy

My mother said to me – ‘Don’t have sex with the gods.’

I said, ‘Why not? It’s an opportunity for a girl with nothing going for her.’

My mother said, ‘Look what happened to Daphne.’

I looked. Anybody who wanted to could see Daphne on the way home from school. She was by the side of the road, green and glossy. She had given Zeus the run-around, ridden in his car, gone to the movies with him, but when it came time for the kisses and the touching, her mother had always told her that good girls didn’t do that. Good girls couldn’t be god girls.

If you wanted to get married and settle down, if you wanted some respect, if you wanted to be true to your sex, sex was not what you did.

So Daphne, who was not doing sex, did the opposite and ran away.

There she goes, her feet in her sandals scuffing the path through the playground where the gods hang out looking for girls. Then she zigzagged into the woods, darker and deeper, her feet leaving prints like an invisible animal.

Zeus ran after her – he was a pursuer after all, and Daphne should have remembered that. He ran, knowing he could easily catch her, but he didn’t hurry because he wanted the chase, and he wanted her tired, a bit scared, in his arms. He wasn’t a bad god, but he was a god – i.e. total sex.

We all knew that about the gods – that they were total sex.

Daphne was running, thinking about what her mother would say, wondering what would happen if she got pregnant, worrying about school, worrying about money, and everybody knows you can’t have sex when you are lying there worrying about everything that isn’t sex.

Zeus was not worrying. His prick was so hard it was ahead of him like a dowsing rod. He’d dowse for her. He’d drill her like a well of water, and when she’d flowed she wouldn’t worry anymore. She’d spill. She’d be wet.

He wanted her to like him.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

He was close. She fell. He was on her. She pulled away. He grabbed her. He kissed her. She, in the time it takes to remember, in the time it takes to forget, kissed him. There was a second of surprise. Something happened. Anything might have happened because a world of gas and bubbles and heat was washing between their mouths. Then the known killed the unknown, and he was a god and she was a girl.

It follows that she turned into a tree.

Calling for help from the goddess Gaia, her white legs fused so tight no one would ever part them. Her speed slowed. Her arms stretched, her head turned in one shift of yearning. Her smooth skin, wet with sweat, was glossy with plant oil. She tried to speak but spat out a leaf. The lovely rustle of her as she moved moved in the breeze. Her green eyes were shiny as bay leaves. They were bay leaves. Laurel Nobilis. She had become a different kind of Daphne.

Zeus pushed himself into the tree of her. She smelled part tree part girl; aromatics and skin. Her leaves still had little hairs from her legs and arms, and where the stem split, where her sex had been, there was sap on his fingers. He licked his fingers. He kissed the leaves. He felt the tree around him, his big confident feet planted at the base of her. She leaned into him and whispered something. It might have been regret.

So on the way home school when everyone had gone and no-one was looking, I went up to Daphne, who’d been dug up and re-located by the school as a warning to the rest of us, and I said,

‘Daphne, why did you do it? I mean – why didn’t you do it?’

Daphne shuddered in the wind. ‘If I had gone with Zeus, nobody would have spoken to me again.’

I said, ‘But nobody speaks to you now – you are a bay bush.’

She shook her leaves sadly. ‘And I had my future to think about.’

‘Flavouring casseroles?’

Daphne leaned her greenness nearer to me. ‘He would have left me. He was only after one thing.’

I picked one of her leaves and chewed it.

That night I went for an under-age drink at The Swan. It’s run by a woman called Leda who bought it out of her compensation money when she was raped by Zeus. In the old days the gods could get away with it, but now you can call a lawyer on a no-win no-fee basis.

Leda has tattoos and lives with an ex-model called Helen Troy. A god rammed Helen’s mother, and Helen for all her beauty, has a lot of testosterone. She does most of the heavy work at The Swan, and the men who drink here respect her. She doesn’t respect them; all that fighting over a piece of tail. She says it was awful being a sex symbol; she would rather have sex – smell, sweat, the agony of intimacy.

She fixed me a cocktail – White Puma – and sat butt sideways on a stool.

‘I met Leda in Rehab’ she said, ‘We were both on drugs – what else is there to be on when you’ve been multiple-fucked by a swan, as in her case, and blamed for destroying a whole city, as in my case?’

‘It was the gods’ I said. ‘No-one blames you.’

‘It’s funny.’ She said, a short Scotch cupped in her long fingers, ‘how we live in no-fault culture that is also a blame culture. My experience is that the no-fault applies to the men, and the blame applies to the women. But you can’t say that post-feminism. And maybe I am just bitter.’

‘You’ve made a new life.’ I say, because I am the cliché-generation.

‘Leda wakes up every night flapping her arms like wings. The judgement was fair – Zeus admitted the swan-work, paid up, went on holiday till the talk died down, and Leda was left to live with it. When you start a new life the past comes with you because there is nowhere else for it to go. One day they’ll rent an island where you can send your past so that it doesn’t have to live with you. But until then…’

‘Maybe, yeah, you are just bitter,’ I say, because I have watched too much daytime TV. I don’t want to say these stupid things but there’s a space in my brain where the complex things should be. I just don’t know how to think.

Leda comes over to join us. She is a skinny white skinned girl, her white skin downy, her eyes black like malachite, and her white-blonde hair cut short and feathered. She looks like a swan. She slides her long arm round Helen Troy’s neck and twists her hand to feel her face. I realise she is blind. I never knew this.

‘Swan pecked her eyes out’ explains Helen Troy. ‘Judge awarded her $50k per eye.’

‘I can see it’ said Leda, ‘the swan was beautiful and gentle and strong and still. I was bathing in the river and as I ducked under the water I saw those strong webbed feet parting the current. I saw the green-weed-wet-white underbelly of the swan. I wasn’t afraid. Then as my head burst back into the sunshine, the water pouring off me like time, the rest of my life pouring down my shoulders in floods of time, and me standing still in that river of time, not understanding that all my past and all my future had dammed up into this moment and was now pouring out, through, past, over me, so that I would always be in the place and never there again, as all of this happened, and my life was caught in one water-drop, the swan covered me.

The swan mounted my back, and anyone who saw must have seen a woman with wings, the great white spread of him out-folded as he used his neck as a noose. His neck made a loop around my neck, his beak hard under my ear, and he lifted me like that out of the water in a beating of wings. The webs of his feet were one each side of me, on my thighs, slightly parting them for grip.

We rose vertical, then he dropped me on the bank, not letting go, and for a few moments we didn’t move at all. A swan’s heartbeat is fast. I felt the fast of his heart under my shoulder blades.

He entered me from behind – not as a swan as a man, and I enjoyed it. He was slow at first and he had to push and because I was on the ground I let him drive me into the cushiony grass. I was pushing as hard as him because I wanted sex.

And they never tell you that, the smug people who tell you they told you so… they never tell you how much you want sex.

And then I did something stupid. I turned over and I looked at him, as he changed like a trick of the light – swan/man/man/swan. I pulled him onto me but I looked at him, and in the looking was the agony of intimacy.

He reared up. Feathers fell from him. His long soft heavy neck hardened into a cosh. I tried to move. It was too late. No desire now, only fear and rage. Pain. The black beak plucked out each of my eyes and I screamed through my open sockets. He broke my pelvis with the force of his thrust. When they found me the ground was litter-deep in bloodstained feathers.

They blamed me. You looked at a god, they said, and the gods come in disguise.

I listened to Leda and Helen Troy. I wondered how anyone finds closeness when violence is so near to it. Maybe the gods come in disguise because they know that – that it is better to take what’s there, take what you can, than risk yourself for what will burn you or break you.

Daphne and Leda are the opposite extremes of want – she risked nothing, and became less than human. I mean, it’s great being a bay tree if that’s your lot in your life, but it can’t be fun for Daphne. Leda was unlucky – she wanted nothing, and then because she surprised herself into wanting more, she risked everything. She got hurt.

I don’t want to be either of them.

Helen Troy was too beautiful. The kind of woman men want so much that they destroy everything just trying to rid themselves of the way they feel. When you feel a lot it’s so scary you want to smash up. If you are a man, it is easier to smash something on the outside than it is to feel what’s happening inside. Women know it’s inside, and so that’s what they smash. They smash themselves.

Me, I don’t want to smash up, but I don’t want to be smashed either. Everyone I meet is really saying the same useless stuff. They say, love is everything, throw yourself off the cliff for him. They say, love doesn’t exist. Get the money and the house.

The lovers all die of betrayal and a broken heart. The non-lovers live longer and hate everyone.

Is that all there is?

I said to Helen Troy. ‘You should dig up Daphne and re-root her here.’

Helen said, ‘That’s a nice idea. She could go in a lead pot by the door then at least she’d have company. No-one wants to be alone.’

‘Shoulda thought of that before she turned herself into a tree’ said Leda, who believes she has suffered more than anyone. But Helen had gone for a spade, and she told me I could get a ride home in her truck. I got in. I liked the old red leather seats, ripped in places like wounds that don’t mind being wounds.

The sun was setting in flakes and bars. The first stars were coming through the sad singing blues of the sky thick with late-homing birds. The stars looked like hope to me. They are two thousand years-away light and nothing in the universe travels faster than light. You would need a lot of patience to travel across time so fast and for so long bringing light.

If love is going to be done differently I will have to do it. I don’t mean as a messiah-thing, I mean as a me-thing. I want to look into your eyes and not get blown up. I want you to see me as I am and not destroy me. I don’t want to retreat into plant life, or have the same bad dream every night. I don’t want to watch a city burn because I was there.

‘You’re just a kid’ says Helen Troy, glancing at me as she tunes the radio. ‘A romantic kid.’

She wants to be kind and she slips her arm round me along the bench seat of the truck. I’d like her to touch me. I want sex. They don’t tell you that…I shift myself to get a better feel from the diesel throb of the unsprung truck. I like the feel of everything, just now, tonight. I feel hope like the stars.

I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes I was lying on my back on the seat and outside I could hear a spade rhythmic digging in the ground. I lay still, listening, thinking. Now the stars were very bright through the glass.

I unzipped my jeans and crooked my knees, my hand moving easily to the rhythm of the spade. A shooting star could lodge in me now and in nine months I’ll have a baby I can throw back into the sky the way that happens to the kids of the gods. My shining son will be a reminder of what I did, but I won’t regret it. And I think that is the only clue; don’t regret it.

Love me let me love you come near me get inside me carry me let me carry you risk it risk everything the stars have been travelling this light all this time let you lie on your back legs open and see it really see it so that it touches you. Touch me.

The star-shot world of the gods.

(originally published in Granta: the Magazine of New Writing, #110 (Sex), Spring 2010)

O carte dedicată Angelei Carter. De povești.

Octavian — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 03:47:16 +0000

Când am citit titlul cărții editate de Kate Bernheimer, “My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales” (aug-11, Penguin), deși mi-a curiozitatea mi-a fost stârnită, nu aveam de unde să știu ce bijuterie de carte tocmai am achiziționat. M-a bucurat mult, prima dată când am răsfoit-o să aflu că antologia de povești are o dedicație pentru Angela Carter, și mai mult, că e prefațată de cuvintele acesteia: “Who first invented meatballs? In what country? Is there a definitive recipe for potato soup?” – cuvinte care cu siguranță nu sunt despre rețete culinare, ci despre dreptul de proprietate asupra fanteziei care se descătușează în povești mai noi și mai vechi, care permite să cunoaștem azi versiuni mai vesele sau mai triste, mai complexe sau mai simple pentru cele peste 25.000 de povești populare și culte care au fost strânse până în prezent (pe care autoarea antologiei pretinde că le cunoaște).

Antologia îngrijită de Kate Bernheimer (fondatoare și redactor la “The Fairy Tale Review“) nu e o antologie de povești clasice, așa cum sunt cele ale lui Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen sau ale fraților Grimm. Pornind de la premisa că șansele de supraviețuire ale poveștilor n-au fost niciodată garantate prin niciun alt principiu decât repovestirea lor, atât în tradiție orală cât și scrisă, Kate Bernheimer invită scriitori contemporani să dea haine noi poveștilor copilăriei, iar unii aleg să păstreze un cadru și personaje devenite atemporale, pe când alții aleg să repovestească sau să continue povești cunoscute într-un cadru contemporan – o aducere la zi sugestivă și foarte acaparantă de care, citind cu plăcere “My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me“, urma să observ că aveam nevoie.

Numele scriitorilor care s-au alăturat colecției îngrijite de Kate Bernheimer este impresionant. “Forty New Fairy Tales” nu se referă numai la faptul că vorbim de povești, în mare parte, contemporane, ci și la faptul că majoritatea materialelor incluse în antologie sunt inedite. Astfel, dacă vreți să citiți povești scrise de Michael Cunningham, Kevin Brockmeier, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil LaBute sau Ludmila Petrushevskaya, dar și de alte câteva zeci de nume de scriitori contemporani, alegere mai bună decât “My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me” nu știu pentru moment. Și, având în vedere rolul marginal pe care îl ocupă poveștile în stare pură în peisajul literaturii de azi și greutatea cu care fantasticul își mai croiește drum în ficțiune, probabil că nici nu o să găsim prea curând. Toate poveștile sunt minunate, de la povestea închipuită de Joy Williams despre Baba Yaga și copilul său pelican la cea a lui Michael Cunningham despre fiul cel mic al împăratului din “The Wild Swans” și ce i se întâmplă acestuia la New York, de la “Snow Queen” a lui Karen Brennan la Barbă Albastră al lui Joyce Carol Oates - toate garantând o lectură incredibil de plăcută pentru copilul pe care îl mai luăm sau nu cu noi în viața adultă.

Cărți care te cuceresc de la primele cuvinte

Octavian — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:10:42 +0000

The Stylist are un articol tare drăguț în care strânge cele mai frumoase 100 începuturi de cărți. Pentru că și eu sunt adeptul cărților care de prima dată când le-ai deschis și le-ai citit primele cuvinte îți cer să le iei acasă, am făcut și eu o scurtă colecție în care am încercat să amintesc cărțile pentru care am stat treaz, pentru care am uitat să cobor din autobuz și bineînțeles cărțile pe care le recitesc periodic.

Michael Cunningham, "The Hours": She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. Another war has begun. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa. She walks purposefully toward the river, certain of what she’ll do, but even now she is almost distracted by the sight of the downs, the church, and a scattering of sheep, incandescent, tinged with a faint hint of sulfur, grazing under a darkening sky. She pauses, watching the sheep and the sky, then walks on. The voices murmur behind her; bombers drone in the sky, though she looks for the planes and can’t see them. She walks past one of the farm workers (is his name John?), a robust, small-headed man wearing a potato-colored vest, cleaning the ditch that runs through the osier bed. He looks up at her, nods, looks down again into the brown water. As she passes him on her way to the river she thinks of how successful he is, how fortunate, to be cleaning a ditch in an osier bed.
Emma Donoghue, "Room": Today I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadabra. Before that I was three, then two, then one, then zero. “Was I minus numbers?” “Hmm?” Ma does a big stretch. “Up in Heaven. Was I minus one, minus two, minus three—?” “Nah, the numbers didn’t start till you zoomed down."
Scott Heim, "Mysterious Skin": The summer I was eight years old, five hours disappeared from my life. I can’t explain. I remember this: first, sitting on the bench during my Little League team’s 7 P.M. game, and second, waking in the crawl space of my house near midnight. Whatever happened during that empty expanse of time remains a blur.When I came to, I opened my eyes to darkness. I sat with my legs pushed to my chest, my arms wrapped around them, my head sandwiched between my knees. My hands were clasped so tightly they hurt. I unfolded slowly, like a butterfly from its cocoon.
Christopher Isherwood, "A Single Man": Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what's called at home.
Erica Jong, "Fear of Flying": There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I’d been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh. God knows it was a tribute either to the shrinks’ ineptitude or my own glorious unanalyzability that I was now, if anything, more scared of flying than when I began my analytic adventures some thirteen years earlier.

Miranda July, "No One Belongs Here More than You": It still counts, even though it happened when he was unconscious. It counts doubly because the conscious mind often makes mistakes, falls for the wrong person. But down there in the well, where there is no light and only thousand-year-old water, a man has no reason to make mistakes. God says do it and you do it. Love her and it is so. He is my neighbor. He is of Korean descent. His name is Vincent Chang. He doesn’t do hapkido. When you say the word “Korean,” some people automatically think of Jackie Chan’s South Korean hapkido instructor, Grandmaster Kim Jin Pal; I think of Vincent.
Susanna Kaysen, "Girl, Interrupted": People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy. And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.
Barbara Kingsolver, "The Lacuna": In the beginning were the howlers. They always commenced their bellowing in the first hour of dawn, just as the hem of the sky began to whiten. It would start with just one: his forced, rhythmic groaning, like a saw blade. That aroused others near him, nudging them to bawl along with his monstrous tune. Soon the maroon-throated howls would echo back from other trees, farther down the beach, until the whole jungle filled with roaring trees. As it was in the beginning, so it is every morning of the world.
Nicole Krauss, "The History of Love": When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT I'm surprised I haven't been buried alive. The place isn't big. I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, kitchen table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet to the front door, impossible, I have to go by way of the kitchen table. I like to imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to round the toilet and the kitchen table in order to arrive at the door.
Carson McCullers, "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter": In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early every morning they would come out from the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the street to work. The two friends were very different. The one who always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it was colder he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater. His face was round and oily, with half-closed eyelids and lips that curved in a gentle, stupid smile. The other mute was tall.His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He was always immaculate and very soberly dressed. Every morning the two friends walked silently together until they reached the main street of the town. Then when they came to a certain fruit and candy store they paused for a moment on the sidewalk outside. The Greek, Spiros Antonapoulos, worked for his cousin, who owned this fruit store. His job was to make candies and sweets, uncrate the fruits, and to keep the place clean. The thin mute, John Singer, nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a second into his face before leaving him.

Haruki Murakami, "Sputnik Sweetheart": In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.
Iris Murdoch, "Bruno's Dream": Bruno was waking up. The room seemed to be dark. He held his breath, testing the quality of the darkness, wondering if it was night or day, morning or afternoon. If it was night that was bad and might be terrible. Afternoon could be terrible too if he woke up too early. The drama of sleeping and waking had become preoccupying and fearful now that consciousness itself could be so heavy a burden. One had to be cunning. He never let himself doze in the mornings for fear of not being able to fall asleep after lunch. The television had been banished with its false sadnesses and its images of war. Perhaps he had nodded off over his book. He had had that dream again, about Janie and Maureen and the hatpin. He felt about him and began to push himself up a little on his pillows, his stockinged feet scrabbling inside the metal cage which lifted the weight of the blankets off them. Tight bedclothes are a major cause of bad feet. Not that Bruno’s feet minded much at this stage.
Tea Obreht, "The Tiger's Wife": In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers. He puts on his hat, his big-buttoned raincoat, and I wear my lacquered shoes and velvet dress. It is autumn, and I am four years old. The certainty of this process: my grandfather’s hand, the bright hiss of the trolley, the dampness of the morning, the crowded walk up the hill to the citadel park. Always in my grandfather’s breast pocket: The Jungle Book, with its gold-leaf cover and old yellow pages. I am not allowed to hold it, but it will stay open on his knee all afternoon while he recites the passages to me. Even though my grandfather is not wearing his stethoscope or white coat, the lady at the ticket counter in the entrance shed calls him “Doctor.”
Sofi Oksanen, "Purge": I have to try to write a few words to keep some sense in my head and not let my mind break down. I’ll hide my notebook here under the floor so no one will find it, even if they do find me. This is no life for a man to live. People need people, someone to talk to. I try to do a lot of pushups, take care of my body, but I’m not a man anymore—I’m dead. A man should do the work of the household, but in my house a woman does it. It’s shameful.
Jonathan Safran Foer, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close": What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know.

Nava Semel, "And the Rat Laughed": How to tell this story? Things that had been locked inside her have begun showing through lately. But maybe there’s no need to tell it. The old woman keeps trying to defend her unswerving resolve, and to stick to her silence. For so many years she’s kept the story within her. And now, the question refuses to be muted any longer. It rises out of its grave, egging her on, intrusive. How should the story be told? But maybe it’s been told already. Leaking through in moments of distraction, forcing its way to the surface whenever she loosened her grip. And since the thought of that story being jostled about, unattended and vulnerable without her, is too unsettling, it’s as if she has no choice but to assume the role of storyteller.
Elif Shafak, "The Bastard of Istanbul": Whatever falls from the sky above, thou shall not curse it. That includes the rain. No matter what might pour down, no matter how heavy the cloudburst or how icy the sleet, you should never ever utter profanities against whatever the heavens might have in store for us. Everybody knows this. And that includes Zeliha. Yet, there she was on this first Friday ofJuly, walking on a sidewalk that flowed next to hopelessly clogged traffic; rushing to an appointment she was now late for, swearing like a trooper, hissing one profanity after another at the broken pavement stones, at her high heels, at the man stalking her, at each and every driver who honked frantically when it was an urban fact that clamor had no effect on unclogging traffic, at the whole Ottoman dynasty for once upon a time conquering the city of Constantinople, and then sticking by its mistake, and yes, at the rain ... this damn summer rain.
Jeanette Winterson, "Boating for Beginners": At eighteen she realised that she would never have the bone structure to be decadent... Years of grimacing in the mirror and covering her face in a solution of bone meal had all been wasted. Her nose was snub, her jaw undistinguished, and she was short. 'It's your own fault, Gloria,' scolded her mother. 'You wouldn't take milk as a child.' She had dreamed of martyrdom, her elegant profile jutting through the flames; she had dreamed of stardom, eager thousands trying to make their cheekbones just like hers. At the very least she might have been a recluse, casting aquiline shadows across her unswept floor. Now, all these things were closed to her, and what was left? She was moderately intelligent, but not very, she had a way with animals, and she wanted to fall in love. She sat down and accepted her fate. Either she could be a secretary or she could be a prostitute. If she chose the latter there would be the problem of what to wear for work and how to arrange her hair (her recent experiments with ash-blond tint had left her threadbare — she should probably have mixed the powder with water instead of bleach). 'I can wear a headscarf if I'm a secretary,' she told herself. Then, a little sadly, 'There's no such thing as a bald prostitute.'
Banana Yoshimoto, "The Lake": The first time Nakajima stayed over, I dreamed of my dead mom. Maybe it was having him in the room that did it, after having been alone so long. I hadn’t slept next to anyone since my dad and I stayed in my mom’s hospital room.I kept waking up and then, relieved that she hadn’t stopped breathing, going back to sleep. The floor was dustier than you’d expect in a hospital, and I lay staring at a ball of lint that was always in exactly the same place. I didn’t sleep well, and whenever I drifted into wakefulness I would hear the footsteps of nurses moving down the hallway. And it occurred to me that I was surrounded by people who could die at any minute, and in some odd way their presence made me feel more at ease here, in the hospital, than I did outside.When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.
Saul Bellow, "Herzog": I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. Some people thought he was cracked and for a time he himself had doubted that he was all there. But now, though he still behaved oddly, he felt confident, cheerful, clairvoyant, and strong. He had fallen under a spell and was writing letters to everyone under the sun. He was so stirred by these letters that from the end of June he moved from place to place with a valise full of papers. He had carried this valise from New York to Martha's Vineyard, but returned from the Vineyard immediately; two days later he flew to Chicago, and from Chicago he went to a village: in western Massachusetts. Hidden in the country, he wrote endlessly, fanatically, to the newspapers, to people in public life, to friends and relatives and at last to the dead, his own obscure dead, and finally the famous dead.

William Styron, "Sophie's Choice": In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn. This was in 1947, and one of the pleasant features of that summer which I so vividly remember was the weather, which was sunny and mild, flower-fragrant, almost as if the days had been arrested in a seemingly perpetual springtime. I was grateful for that if for nothing else, since my youth, I felt, was at its lowest ebb. At twenty-two, struggling to become some kind of writer, I found that the creative heat which at eighteen had nearly consumed me with its gorgeous, relentless flame had flickered out to a dim pilot light registering little more than a token glow in my breast, or wherever my hungriest aspirations once resided. It was not that I no longer wanted to write, I still yearned passionately to produce the novel which had been for so long captive in my brain.
Janice Galloway, "The Trick Is to Keep Breathing": I watch myself from the corner of the room sitting in the armchair, at the foot of the stairwell. A small white moon shows over the fencing outside.No matter how dark the room gets, I can always see. It looks emptier when I put the lights on so I don't do it if I can help it. Brightness disagrees with me: it hurts my eyes, wastes electricity, and encourages moths, all sorts of things, I sit in the dark for a number of reasons.
Sasa Stanisic, "How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone": Grandpa Slavko measured my head with Granny's washing line, I got a magic hat, a pointy magic hat made of cardboard, and Grandpa Slavko said: I'm really too young for this sort of thing, and you're already too old. So I got a magic hat with yellow and blue shooting stars on it, trailing yellow and blue stars, and I cut out a little crescent moon to go with them and two triangular rockets. Gagarin was flying one, Grandpa Slavko was flying the other. Grandpa, I can't go out in this hat! I should hope not!
Kobo Abe, "The Woman in the Dunes": One day in August a man disappeared. He had simply set out for the seashore on a holiday, scarcely half a day away by train, and nothing more was ever heard of him. Investigation by the police and inquiries in the newspapers had both proved fruitless. Of course, missing persons are not really uncommon. According to the statistics, several hundred disappearances are reported every year. Moreover, the proportion of those found again is unexpectedly small. Murders or accidents always leave some clear piece of evidence, and the motives for kidnapping are normally ascertainable. But if the instance does not come under some such heading, clues—and this is especially true in the case of missing persons—are extremely difficult to come by. Many disappearances, for example, may be described as simple escape.
Gilbert Adair, "The Dreamers": The Cinematheque Francaise is located in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris between the Trocadero esplanade and the avenue Albert-de-Mun. The Mussolinian monumentality of the Palais de Chaillot in which it's housed so impresses the cinephile visiting it for the first time, that he rejoices living in a country ready to accord such prestige to what tends elsewhere to be the least respected of the arts. Hence the disappointment when he discovers, on closer inspection, that the Cinematheque itself occupies no more than one small wing of the edifice, arrived at, almost furtively, by a basement entrance tucked away out of sight.

Pe voi ce cărți v-au convins să le citiți după prima propoziție?

Literatura urban fantasy: Cine o citește și de ce?

Octavian — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 20:07:06 +0000

În numărul de august al revistei ELLE puteți citi un frumos articol semnat Alina Băisan intitulat: “Literatura urban fantasy: Cine o citește și de ce?“. Articolul urmărește deloc biased rolul pe care îl ocupă literatura “gen Twilight” în termeni populari prin intermediul cuvintelor psihoterapeutului Anca Maftei, cititoarei Cătălina Cristescu și subsemnatului. M-am bucurat să am ocazia să vorbesc despre literatură în primul rând și apoi despre parte din scriitorii mei preferați de fantasy: Neil Gaiman, Suzanne Collins, Maggie Stiefvater, dar bineînțeles și despre Stephenie Meyer și de ce un lectura “Twilight” n-ar trebui ocolită decât dacă puteți pune la colț părerea a milioane de cititori și după dormi liniștiți :-) Nu în ultimul rând m-a bucurat și faptul că ELLE a acordat spațiu în revistă subiectului (și unul generos, vorbim de trei pagini).

“Ficțiunea urban fantasy oferă un răspuns, desigur, imaginar și hiperbolic de multe ori, la resemnarea oamenilor de a fi doar oameni. Să ne imaginăm doar, doi oameni pot să se iubească și să își declare dragostea eternă, dar destinul biologic are un cuvânt neiertător de spus. Și dacă “întotdeauna” ar fi pentru totdeauna? E o întrebare la care realismul ne oprește înainte să formulăm măcar o alternativă, oricât de firavă. Nu același lucru se întâmplă în urban fantasy.”

Și pentru că am uitat să le pun pe blog la momentul respectiv, iată alte două apariții ale blogului joacadeamine.ro în presă, tot în ELLE, de data aceasta în numărul de aprilie-11:

și în numărul din luna mai al revistei Beau Monde:

Alte articole similare pe joacadeamine.ro: Generația pentru care timpul nu este destul | E-book readerele vor arde mai greu | Adevărul despre joaca de-a mine

Unde se exilează bestiarul nostru din copilărie

Octavian — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:58:55 +0000

În weekend am dat peste câteva desene pe care le-am făcut în urmă cu 30 de ani (pentru că probabil tot în urmă cu 30 de ani ar fi trebuit să mă opresc din cariera de desenator) și am stat câteva minute incomode să-mi dau seama ce a vrut să deseneze autorul – incomoditatea nu rezulta din incapacitatea mea de a mă exprima plastic despre ce a vrut să spună autorul, ci din faptul că autorul eram eu și m-am îndepărtat suficient de mult de partea din mine care a creat respectivele desene. Într-o concepție populară, am crescut. Știu că există diverse paliere pe care asta era ceva inevitabil, s-a întâmplat frumos și aduce beneficii în timp real, dar n-am putut să-mi cenzurez întrebarea, cum ar fi dacă…

Cum ar fi dacă jucăriile din copilăria fiecăruia ar semăna cu ceea ce ne imaginăm noi la vârsta în care corpurile au tot dreptul să fie diforme, părțile corpului disproporționate și anatomia ar corespunde mai puțin unui manual. Am avea alte standarde? Am fi mai puțin lookiști și mai îngăduitori cu cei din jur? Ne-am acorda mai multe șanse să fim fericiți? Există desigur o politețe în a te îmbrăca drăguț și a te îngriji, dar unde se exilează bestiarul nostru din copilărie? Moare pur și simplu într-un habitat în care pătrățelele caietului de matematică și lecțiile de biologie încep să însemne mai mult?

Așa se face că în weekend am descoperit un loc minunat. În care animalelor, păsărilor și florilor pe care le desenăm când suntem copii le este acordată o șansă. Se cheamă LUtOPIA și acolo Tom și Lumi au deschis cușca în care închidem ființele fantastice pe care ni le imaginăm în copilărie. Așadar dacă ai desene de când erai mic/ă sau vrei să-i oferi copilului tău jucării care să semene cu ce-și imaginează el despre lumea în care trăim, găsești LUtOPIA pe blog și pe Facebook. (sursa foto: LUtOPIA)

Foamea de realitate. Manifest.

Octavian — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 04:56:23 +0000

Prima mea întâlnire cu David Shields a fost în urmă cu câțiva ani când m-a amuzat teribil de mult titlul puțin teribilist “The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead“, iar apoi nu m-a mai amuzat deloc ce am citit (ba chiar m-am surprins dând din cap aprobator la fiecare lucru pe care îl citeam. Sentimentul nu a fost deloc diferit când am citit cea mai recentă carte a lui Shields, “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto” (feb-11, Knopf Doubleday). Chiar dacă la început am fost neîncrezător față de îndrăzneala din subtitlu (până la urmă calitatea de manifest nu e una performativă, chiar e nevoie de acțiune ca un text să devină manifest iar ‘manifestul’ lui Shields nu vorbește în numele niciunei mișcări), “Reality Hunger” mi-a plăcut pentru că întrebarea principală, dacă viteza culturii digitale în care ne aruncăm cu capul înainte va reduce eficiența modalităților tradiționale de a ne exprima este una care merită atenție și totodată una la care David Shields pare să aibă suficiente răspunsuri plauzibile.

Pornind de la ideea că avem cu toții o nevoie acută de realitate, pe care o testăm prin diferite mijloace, și că suntem dispuși azi să încorporăm în experiența noastră cotidiană accidentul, aleatoriul și serendipitatea, Shields discută limitele pe care le găseam oportune cândva între ficțiune și non-ficțiune și ficțiunea continuă pe care o bifăm zilnic, cea a extra-literarului: politică, advertising, gossip, fandom – toate creând o literatură nouă pe care azi mijloacele de comunicare ne-o permit și pe care suntem mult mai dispuși s-o numim realitate decât, să spunem, un roman din secolul al XIX-lea. Ceea ce ar fi putut fi divertisment pasager devine un substitut aproape unanim aprobat pentru realitate – sau, în cuvintele lui Shields, realitatea este împănată cu ireal pentru a fi reală. Colajul nostru cultural, se pare, este suficient de atractiv ca să ne mai punem probleme reale într-un cadru real și să le găsim soluții reale, deoarece scenariul pe care îl trăim (sau creăm) fiind mult mai oportun pentru fiecare în parte. Dacă, în termeni simpliști, ai numit o întâmplare din viața ta ‘episod’ și te-ai plâns deseori că socoteala de acasă nu se potrivește cu cea din târg, înseamnă că i-ai găsit un loc în viața ta morbului ficțional pe care îl descrie Shields. Combinată cu o conștiință de sine și cu cronologii digitale, realitatea noastră a încetat să fie a noastră, spune David Shields; iar opțiunile pe care această nouă ficțiune cotidiană și personală le pot deschide sunt o cutie a Pandorei pe care va trebui, tot în timp real, să o deschidem cu grijă și să nu părem surprinși de ce găsim în ea.