Above the bus stop

Early morning. Slumped against the churchyard wall by the bus stop. The bus driver’s deep in his newspaper; we won't be leaving yet. Hiatus. From the blinkered space between sleep’s hangover and the numbing cold of a grey morning, look up… and up, and back and see the ordinary, extraordinary patterns on the sky. Zoom lens: eyes, then feet float up towards the tree-tops. Cool, dreamy clarity of Winter shapes. With me still at noon.

February again

I let the anniversary go by, and yet can't quite. Mid February 2005 I started doing this. And still I do it, although it's an ache as much as a pleasure - the knowledge that I can't or won't write more or better, that the precious, tenuous contacts made through blogging come and go and are subject to the same dissatisfactions (mostly with myself) as any others. But take this ache away and I'd feel hollow. Every small piece of self-expression heaved out into the virtual world is a centring, a brief sighting of home.

Stumbled upon

In a shop that sells cheap, remaindered books (reminding me always of Clive James' superb poem) I found a treasure, and no doubt the start of a minor new obsession. A Viennese treasure, it was, as beguilingly, perfectly formed as a slice of Sachertorte: a slice of the city at the time of Freud.

Just another example of the ubiquitous Eurocrime genre, subcategory: historical, but one extremely, particularly to my liking. Vienna Blood, I quickly learned (for as soon as I think 'Oh, I like this!' I start googling around), is the second crime novel by Frank Tallis, set in Vienna at the very beginning of the 20th century and featuring Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and his friend, the young Jewish doctor and Freudian psychoanalyst, Max Liebermann.

Intriguingly, Frank Tallis, I learn, is a clinicial psychologist in the British National Health Service, whose previous published works include How to Stop Worrying and Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness! And he's good.

Like many compulsive readers, I adore many - though certainly not all - crime novels. And like many, the attraction for me is not the gory, the creepy or the suspenseful, nearly as much as it's the gift of a structure the genre provides: the familiar, clever investigator/protagonist arriving in the lives of disparate strangers and having a good look around. And here, come to think of it, the Max Liebermann novels are a little different. While the characters of Liebermann and Rheinhardt are lovingly, subtly drawn, the parade of suspects is vivid, but perhaps less subtle, more a parade of interesting types. The third protagonist, explored in well-researched detail, is Vienna in 1902, it's cross-currents of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, decadence and scientific innovation (and, of course, what the latter brought to the art of detection - the first analysis of blood and microscopic examination of dust and fibres),

Vienna in the time of Freud: as I followed Max up the winding stairs to the Professor's apartment, the description was so precise that I saw again the building at 19 Berggasse, the apartment now a museum, although it is some years since I visited. I loved this skilful picture of a place, a mindset, in interesting times. I also loved the writing style, which is elegantly spacious, with a definite, but not too laboured, nod to the period, a seriousness and verbosity that persuasively evoke another age, but never become tedious.

The small pleasures mean as much, often, as the weightier ones, especially when daily routines feel all too weighty. I'll be back for sure as soon as I can lay my hands on Mortal Mischief and the recently published Fatal Lies.

Big smile

I’ve waited a long time for this - about 32 years in fact! A small, self-mocking sense of satisfaction assails me because my recent hay(na)ku to an, um, table has made the latest Best of New Writing on the Web compiled by Litlove of Tales from the Reading Room. Litlove, you see, is a lecturer in French at Cambridge University – a species from whom I received very little approval during my deeply undistinguished (frequently on the verge of being kicked out, actually) years as a student of Modern Languages at that illustrious institution. I’m chagrined to note that more than half a lifetime later this still matters to me. We never get over our youthful fiascos, do we?

But self-mockery aside, the reason Litlove’s approval brings a big smile to my face is that I love reading her blog and share many of her literary tastes and instincts. A big, big smile.

Deceptive

these
veiled mornings
dissolve into radiance

tender
blossoms lured
into premature birth

Golden

The blogger and the buddhas.







Yesterday was the most limpid of golden days, and the golden buddhas sang like bells in the sunshine. A gift of a day.

Overtired is...

...when you stand there looking blank and the guy reminds you you usually have chai latte.

Antidote to overstimulation

amazing
how something
so plain pleases

how
drawn I
am to this

quiet
angularity and
its matching shadows

I
imagine myself
pulling up a

chair
and laying
my head on

the
table top
rubbing my hot

cheek
on the
cool white surface

before
I pick
up my pen

and
write only
small smooth words

The Chimaera: a literary miscellany

Chimaera of Arezzo, c 400 BC

A new online literary magazine that looks set to be very good indeed, The Chimaera, captures my allegiance by devoting its second issue to translation and writing about translation.



I'd love to review it properly, but am still, alas, myself, far from lion, goat or serpent, in busy bunny mode. Maybe later.

Naivasha

not my photo (who ever would have dreamed in 1986 of digital photography?)

Naivasha was somewhere I went a long time ago and looked on the dreamy sight of a lake alive with pink flamingos. Now people there are killing each other, wielding machetes and burning houses. Of course it isn’t more tragic if it’s somewhere you’ve been, or if it’s happening somewhere beautiful. But it certainly brings the shock and tragedy of violence home to you.