never again will a story be told as though it’s the only one – john berger

We are nearly there, and my friend turns to me, touching my arm. I smile, and she points out a distant snow-brushed peak. The hills are black ash but already trees sprout bright dresses of life. Snug houses, flame-licked but whole, sit amongst silent forest ghosts. There is one home coming up on our right, burnt with memory, where she will be waiting. Three and a half decades ago, she held me, briefly, before I went to other arms. Now, as we turn down the drive, I see her. She stands under a carport, her face in the light, shining. – SmokeLong Quarterly, 2003

Eggs I

I hated eggs when I was a child. But my parents thought they would help me grow into a big strong girl, and so they gave me one egg every morning.

They would poach or boil it, and put tomato sauce on the plate. I would take tiny spoonfuls, and try to ignore the taste as I chewed and swallowed. Then I would try big mouthfuls, to get through the meal more quickly, but that gave me an explosion of the foulness, the egginess, the white and yellow repellant smoothness. Sometimes I would be unable to keep it down, and flood the breakfast table with my undigested horror.

My parents would also try egg sandwiches, but the bread was never enough to mask the hateful flavour. It became a battle of sorts, with my parents eyeing me defiantly, daring me to come up with another complaint, another reason to not eat such a healthful foodstuff, or another vomit.

I took to hiding the egg sandwiches behind a large cupboard in the dining room. When my mother was in the kitchen, I would silently rise from the chair, and, keeping my eyes on the door, stuff the vile matter into the narrow gap between wood and wall. Sometimes it wouldn’t all fit, and bits of egg would scatter on the floor, or stick to the painted wall. I would frantically scrape it off and poke it back, pick up the squares of bread and force them behind the cupboard with the dust and cobwebs and dead spiders, as far as I could.

When we were sitting at that dining table one evening, a movement on the wall near the cupboard caught my eye. It was a big, black cockroach, the second most revolting thing in the world after eggs, and it was heading towards the space behind the cupboard. My mother saw it and put down her knife and fork.

What I am reading now

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

 

 

 

 

Slowly working through:

Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2nd ed.)

Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience by Carolyn Ellis and Michael G Flaherty (eds.)

Autoethnography as Method by Heewon Chang

and dipping in and out of books like:

How to Write A Better Thesis by David Evans et al (3rd ed.)

How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing by Paul J Silvia

as well as zillions of articles…

Tempted by Orhan Pamuk’s The Innocence of Objects which arrived today, delivered by the friendly courier

Origin

Where does this story begin? Does every story have a beginning, or do some just emerge out of a continuous running narrative? Or should that be narratives? Are we constantly making stories every minute of every day, or is there only the one grand narrative of the human condition, to which we all contribute? Did this particular story that I am about to tell begin when I was born, or did it begin much earlier, when my birthparents met, or when my birthmother left home to travel, or even when she was born? Or did it begin when my adoptive parents married, and no children came?

Or perhaps the story begins when I was told of my adoption, when the story that had been forming behind me, of a life written by others not myself, suddenly stopped, caught in the transition from secret to revelation?

Did the story begin when I started writing it myself?

This pain

This pain begins like a small movement in my belly. I barely notice. Then the feeling grows, and bits of it get stuck around a bone, pull insistently, make me notice. Grows some more, and then I have a hard time concentrating on what I’m doing, have to stop and take a breath. Then it grows again, and I know that I’m in for a bad couple of hours or so. It makes a run for it, enlarges into a wall, until I have to get up from my chair and take the pain and the body it inhabits for an endless walk. There is no sitting or lying down with this beast, this Thing, this mountain of lava. It will eat me unless I go inside myself and ride with it until it’s seen the light of day. I must endure it, as the drug has failed. I have only myself to use against the biting, rasping saw of it.

Gadgets

You are not a gadget, he said to me as his hand hovered over mine.

I feel like one. Sometimes.

The café was noisy, as usual. But his eyes on my face were intent, which was not usual. He didn’t look away.

We’d seen a lot of each other lately, but I’d not thought anything of it. All the other men I’d drunk coffee with had drifted away, so why should this one be any different. Except, his hand lowered on to mine and stayed there.

Were we in a romantic movie? I felt any moment that someone would yell cut and we’d sit back and then start again. Over and over until it was right.

But there was no yelling, it wasn’t a movie, it was the noisy café, and he was grasping my other hand too.

Review of The Event of Literature

Terry Eagleton is a literary theorist and critic, public intellectual, Marxist, and author of numerous books, including a memoir The Gatekeeper (2002) and the extremely widely read Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983). He studied under Raymond Williams at Cambridge, and has held positions at various universities, lately being Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster.

He also has a sense of humor, which reveals itself at surprising moments throughout this latest book. If you are unfamiliar with his work I would recommend reading Literary Theory first, and perhaps others, to familiarize yourself with his ideas and style of thinking and writing. This latest book seems to be aimed at those with a special interest in literature and literary theory, rather than the general reader. Or, as the author notes in his preface, those interested in thephilosophy of literature.

Review continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

Silence

There was no response when she banged the tin. For five minutes she hit it with a spoon, as she always did, but no Spooky. She shrugged, thinking she’d wait five minutes and try again. It was a bright blue day, and quiet. She listened for the usual sounds of the noisy miners, aptly named, and the currawongs. The air seemed awfully still. She lived far from any main roads, so no traffic noises, which she loved. But this morning there were no other noises either.