andrew burke wrote:
> *Sliding Doors*
>
> * *
>
> *What is shared, at **
> best, is intriguing, your life, this
> surrogate social struggle.*
>
>
>
> Charles Bernstein
>
>
>
>
>
> If there’d been
>
> sliding doors – you know
>
> the image? Mother died early
>
> and Father mellowed into
>
> old age. Slide. Adage after ad
>
> copy, the tricks of wit without
>
> a safety net, pulsing through
>
> sentences gracious as
>
> sonatas. As it was,
>
> Father sold the world
>
> by the block, and let squatters
>
> camp in disused tramcars
>
> on blocks of sand by
>
> the best beachfront real estate
>
> on the coast. We saw slides
>
> of them on the lounge room wall,
>
> pleasant after the bloodred
>
> whaling company slides.
>
> There are many sides to
>
> every man and
>
> one of them is his woman.
>
> Vice versa. Few blocks had
>
> water and none power. But
>
> at no rent and no rates,
>
> who’s complaining? We lived
>
> in a big house top of
>
> a rise by the river. I think
>
> our doors were hinged:
>
> you were inside or out. My
>
> Father had a saying which
>
> still echoes: Out the front
>
> and work; out the back
>
> and play. Life’s
>
> like that: don’t get cute
>
> with the program, just
>
> do the next suggested thing.\
>
It's a marvelously magnetic and confusing (to me) piece of writing, and
I fear I do what I do with anything I don't understand, which is
simplify it. I also cook spaghetti too long.
Sliding doors to me suggest choices, of which we make more than our
share: Which side are you on, the hottest part of Hell, etc., etc. Where
I get particularly lost is on the difference (if there is one) between
hinged and sliding doors. Either way you are one side or t'other.
Rarely have I run into any situation that truly functioned by suggestion
but rather by involuntary hypnosis or plain command. The next thing you
may do might be right or wrong, but it will supercede what came before
and perhaps even grow out of it.
Apart from that, I feel totally inane and you've got me.
ken
--
Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/ http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
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"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
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