Red Thread(s)

There's a prefatory note in the holograph edition of of Woolf's The Waves, wch remarks that the manuscript was originally written in purple ink, or black ink that had faded to purple.

"Come into the garden, Maud
And blossom in purple and red."

Spurious offers a quote from WG Sebald:

Flaubert was in a sense the forerunner of writing scruples. I do believe that in the eighteenth century, say, Voltaire or Rousseau wrote much more naturally than people did from the nineteenth century onwards. Flaubert sensed this more than any other writer. If you look at Rousseau's letters, for instance, they're beautifully written. He dashed off 23 in a day if necessary, and they're all balanced, they're all beautiful prose. Flaubert's letters are already quite haphazard; they're no longer literary in that sense. He swears, he makes exclamations, sometimes they're very funny. But he was one of the first to realise that there was appearing in front of him some form of impasse. And I think nowadays it's getting increasingly difficult because writing is no longer a natural thing for us.
--W. G. Sebald, in an interview

I think I know the source for this, but I'm mistaken; what I do recollect is a selection of Sebaldian "maxims" from an issue of Five Dials. "Veils of ash" and "veils of rain" are cited in the following essay, wch mentions After Nature, a book I've read once & haven't touched in years. I take it off the shelf, and there's a slip of paper inside the front cover, a receipt -- but it's almost entirely blank; it's only the dimensions and texture that make me recognize it as such. The ink hasn't ghosted onto the endpapers, it's merely faded almost entirely away; odd, as it's been sealed up away from the light and air for some time. I can make out enough to see that it's from the University Book Store, and the date 2004. That seems about right, chronologically speaking -- likely picked up off the mark-down table. Slowly, though, more ink appears: I can fully discern "University Book Store | 2004-2005" and "Retain this receipt." All that identifies my purchase(s)? are some numbers, stock codes at the margin.
Pondering loss lately, it's strange how things come back.

faded almost entirely away, slowly almost everything comes back to me

4.

doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death


5.

early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;
seclusion and angels exist;
widows and elk exist; every
detail exists; memory, memory's light;
afterglow exists; oaks, elms,
junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;
eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar
exist, and the future, the future


-- Inger Christensen, from Alphabet

No posts for July. Seems I didn't do much. The sentences come slowly, when they come. Crawling, broken waves. Seems I didn't say much, either. Kind of a hollow. I worked. I fretted. I went from smoking a pack of cigarettes in a week to one in four days. I began to feel that my use of a computer was an invasion of my own privacy. I ignored emails. I paced. I curtailed long walks due to laziness and the heat. I slept odd hours, waking in the middle of the night to go outside and look at the stars. Cigarettes at 3am. Slow sentences. I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass and wonder how this came to be. A phrase occurs, it sounds good, I roll it around in my head, I don't write it down. This aids in the delusion of writing. Yet there's a cheap paper notepad, corners creased, half-way written through; it's in the bookstack next to this table, its first few dozen pages dogged & curled back. These I can dispose of with no ill will, regard. I saw J. tonight, who asked are you still blogging. Fits and starts. No talk of writing, thank god. It was late. I get through most days with a shrug and a half-smile. "Every thought sholud recall the debris of a smile." - Jean-Luc Godard, Eloge de l'amour. I digress.
I saw that the first of the dahlias are starting to bloom. I read Janice Galloway's first novel, and she's correct: The Trick Is To Keep Breathing. Crawling, broken waves. Sometimes a phrase comes.