Interesting the way it stretches out, slowing everything down, Lawrence.
Doug
On 2012-08-08, at 8:40 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have no snap. Again
>
> I offer this to be continued piece of prose invoking the etc in our title
>
> L
>
> *
>
> The first time she saw him, he was squatting at the far side of a half-lit
> room, fussing with his suitcase; and she thought of a fire-damaged sofa.
>
> There wasn’t any furniture near him; the room was almost empty; but she
> thought of him that way, a severely fire-damaged sofa.
>
> As she entered, so he stood, attempting to straighten himself; and, as he
> stood, some of the flame-blackening left him, seen now as abandoned
> shadow.
>
> Jutting springs and crumbling timber explained themselves visually; and he
> began to become a bipedal figure. Now she thought of him as a large baby
> with a beard.
>
> He walked towards her with a gawky expression, an extensive hand forward,
> ready to shake any hand she dare proffer. He seemed for a tick to have a
> multitude of limbs, but that was perhaps the way he lolloped as he walked.
>
> Maybe, she thought, he isn’t that tall.
>
> If she imagined herself ascended to a great height, far above the tallest
> building, then he might seem to be less abnormal. Go higher still and all
> was fine though much of him might seem mountainous when seen in the
> context of mountains. That was his shape.
>
> Accept the shape and the image of a baby returned. It was hard not to see
> him that way. He was after all smiling or something like it. It might be
> the best that he could do.
>
> He needs a cat, she thought. It was an opinion that she formed whenever
> she met someone who seemed not to own a cat.
>
> There was no loose fallen fur visible on the jacket as that enormity came
> close. He moved quickly, not quite jerkily, but everything about him had a
> form of suddenness. He was furniture; and then he was rising; and the
> briefcase hanging from his left hand seemed to be no larger than a
> teaspoon in comparison; but that was because he had crossed the room so
> rapidly.
>
> It would have to be a psychotic cat, or a cat reconciled to developing
> psychosis, if he did not change his demeanour.
>
> -----
> Lawrence Upton
> Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
> Goldsmiths, University of London
> New Cross, London SE14 6NW
> ----
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
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