Archives for 2007

for my papers ware promiscuous and out of forme¹

Think.
I learned early on in life to hate that word.

“Think,” my father would say. “Think before you do anything.”
And, for variety, would often demand: “Why don’t you think? Why didn’t you think first?”

Think.
In italics; also in capitals: think.
I learned early to hate the word.

Phases come and go. We grow in and out of particular words. The internal links of shared coherences grow increasingly tenuous, softly snap in two, fade away, finally noiselessly disappear. Conversations grow different, twist along different courses, draw strength from different roots. Our private languages take on new meanings that only we the speakers have access to, that no dictionary could explicate and no encyclopedia date for the uninitiated. The only way the listening aliens could approach the things unsaid would be to live our lives, to learn our stories – words begetting more words being the only way ever to reach at the slowly shifting silences. Continue reading this entry »

Write write write write write write, I need to write. Say a word long enough, often enough, chant it fixedly enough write write write writew ritewrite wri tewr itew rite ri tewr i te wri te and it begins to say more than any word really should be able to say, every intonation giving it increasing meaning with every repetition and every breath deepening and why would you stop, why on earth would you stop just saying that one word pick a word any word just keep going and it becomes the whole entire world, everything here, in the rise and fall of your voice, the silences in between the letters the repetitions the periods, everything here, why stop.
Except I do.

This winter has been good to me, good for me. The cold my safety and this chill my love. It began, this winter, like this: my mind trying, tired, to say things, to explain, to sort out the detritus of much more than merely four months of mental effort, and always this tripping over a single word. Any random word. Some word would emerge, something small, from the middle of a paragraph, a sentence, a letter I was composing and I could not go on. Writing was a struggle against the impulse to put that one word on paper and nothing else, that one word over and over an dovera nd over, just keeping over. This was a form of life-giving, I was dully sure of it: just give the word and the word alone and it would generate its own life, under the sheer force of its own potency.
Except it never works like that. Continue reading this entry »

The principle invoked [in ideology] is that we belong to something before we are anything, that our loyalties and sense of solidarity are prior to intelligence. This sense of solidarity is not simply emotional, any more than it is simply intellectual: it might be better called existential.

- Words With Power: Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature (Northrop Frye)

“They’ve made an awful mess of your papers,” observed Margo,
Larry stared at her for a moment, breathing deeply.
“What a masterly understatement,” he said at last; “you are always ready with the apt platitude to sum up a catastrophe. How I envy you your ability to be inarticulate in the face of Fate.”

- My Family and Other Animals (Gerald Durrell)

With much shame, I remember this word ghati. A suppurating sore of a word, oozing the stench of bigotry.

- “Lend Me Your Light,” Tales from Firozsha Baag (Rohinton Mistry)

Exactly three weeks ago my wallet was stolen. Everything in it, from my SIN card to my expired metropass, disappeared. I can pinpoint the exact location, even the moment down to the minute, when it was lifted from my bag. Later someone asked me if the fact that someone had so casually violated my personal space didn’t scare me at all. As with most things, I didn’t care. Just a wallet, just some plastic, about ten dollars cash. All replaceable. The story of it became the thing. The reality of it became subsumed by the tellings.

Today I made my way to a government office to replace my driver’s license: an exercise in superfluity, given that I rarely drive and have no interest in owning a car. But it seemed like the responsible, adult thing to do and I’d put it down on my list of cards to replace. In any case, when I first applied for my card years ago, I filled in the application with my brother’s birthyear instead of my own. That led to certain hilarities later on, when I forgot how old I was and couldn’t remember why I wasn’t still in high school.

It’s a small office at College and Bathurst. Green sign at the door, grey carpeting inside. The four kiosks are occupied and there is one woman in line. She looks directly at me as I walk in. I settle myself against the wall behind her. It never occurs to me to put my bag down, so I stand with my shoulders digging into the wall, the strap of my bag pressing against my chest.

A close-built man flirts with the middle-aged attendant nearest to me. She grins absently into her phone and he looks pleased. The woman in front of me gets called up to the kiosk. There was a blank hunger in the way she surveyed the people in the room that made me look away from her. She is selling her car. The attendant explains to her that licence plates are not transferable. She repeats herself three times, but the woman continues to exude an air of stolid bafflement.

The only child in the room circles the coin-operated toddler-sized motorcycle and truck in the corner of the room. I try to remember what those over-sized toys are called. They conjure up blurry memories of fair grounds and expansive malls. His mother puts in some change as I explain to the woman behind the desk why I’m there. A mechanical rumbling sets up. It seems to surprise no one. Taking my cue from the uninterrupted secretaries, I don’t even turn to look. As I put away my things away, a low siren draws the rumbling to a close; the ride ends. I thank the attendant and leave.

Outside, a crew of police cruisers has cordoned off the intersection from oncoming traffic. A firetruck has drawn to a halt on the other side of the street. A woman in a pink parka exits the pharmacy, steps in front of me, sets up a monotoned chant as she walks, ohmygodohmygodohmygod. There are clusters of people on either side of the street. A tall blonde boy stands alone on the north side, his glasses dull in the rain and the smoke. I keep walking, past the people who ask strangers what happened ohmygodwhathappened, past the smell of burning, the thick grey clouds hugging the pavement. I walk faster, past the dented lightpost, past the green car turned upside down, concentrated black inside, past the yellow jackets leaning into that emptiness.

I keep walking. Running through the headlights. Finally, when I am several blocks away, I stop and for a long time, I stand absolutely still in the fading rain. People step around me.

On Tuesday, someone asked me what I was interested in studying for my PhD.
I hesitated a moment. Then I said, “digital media studies.”

On Monday, I dropped by the Centre for South Asian Studies, where I looked into the protocol for withdrawing from the South Asian Studies collaborative program. All I need to do now is fill out a simple form and I will no longer be a bona fide scholar of South Asian studies.

Whatever that means.

Ok, here’s the thing cutting to the chase let’s get this over with moving on just this how did it take so long ignoring now the distractions steel trap falling: I don’t need to study this in school. I don’t need a line on my degree saying, here, I am a specialist in the field.
A “specialist.” All it takes is four months and one credit. Sally forth, my fellow specialists, burdened with your knowledge.
Continue reading this entry »

The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do. As a counterbalance, then, we begin with that everfresh and exciting odium: the author’s formal introduction. The one I have in mind not only is wordy and earnest beyond my wildest dreams but is, to boot, rather excruciatingly personal.

- “Zooey,” Franny and Zooey (JD Salinger)

As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lime bean, I urge my editor and mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius dominus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

- Dedication, Franny and Zooey (JD Salinger)

my papers ware promiscuous and out of forme

- Running in the Family (Ondaatje)