Words That Talk Too Much (or NOSTALGIA)

There are definitely too many of those, words that go on talking and nattering, asking questions even when the lights go out and I thought I'd pinned them to a page. I just thought that I should probably apologise for the rant- the lengthy and silly rant, and leave it with the fact that BBC iplayer and programs about Russian Art incense me more than the average viewer.

(As a peace offering, I bring you this:
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/art-is-useless-because.html
in regards to Oscar Wilde who I dropped in the finishing sentence last post and then did not even explain myself fully. As we know, in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde states that "all art is useless". I hate to question genius, but I think he meant rather, that beauty is useless, and as art is a complicated mixture of that and many things which I try and fail to catch out and label, I'll let it go to the party, drink cider and fornicate. Because in the end, that is what all concerned parents must learn to do. So anyway, this here site I have shown you is truly the most amazing internet find. It's letters from all sorts of interesting people about interesting things, previously unseen and rounded up for your pleasure and distraction. I thought the snippet I selected quite appropriate.)

My favourite word is probably "and" in case you had not noticed. I loathe to let a sentence end, each one a microcosm that should really be allowed to stand on it's own. But it always gets it's value from the before and after, apart form if it's a quotation, to be drawled, dumbed down, de-constructed and re-construed, misconstrued and everything in between. Actually no, I think I will stick to my point. A sentence is it's before and after. As I am, was, will be. I've been thinking about Switzerland a lot lately, and how when I was young I was so much more mature than I am now. Hardened, wizened to the world and an incredible pessimist, but I found worst-case scenarios kind of epic. I would prance around my school, Burgmatt Schule, where it is no hyperbole- I am sometimes a bit liberal with the dramatics- when I say that I had not a single friend or even someone who was not openly hostile toward me. Wait,I did have one secret friend actually, let's call her Beige, who used to be nice to me only when no one was around and I was never allowed to tell. In front of the other kids she would join in the name-calling and ripping up my books or whatever, but we would look at each other across the classroom and I would feel like I had defeated the others a little bit, because I knew something about one of them that they did not. She comes and visits me here often, even surprising me on my birthday.
But anyway, I was met with scorn even by the teachers. This is due to 2 things I think, 1) that I was foreign to their little hamlet 2) that I was somewhat strange.
I can remember bad things happening to me, many, but I don't need to talk about them because the prevailing feeling about that time now is that I was utterly alone, with my mum being off at work and whatnot, and yet had a world more alive and more wonderful because I kept myself company, and my internal projections of everything were shamefully romanticised. The walks to and from school were the best, provided I managed to get away from the beasties before they could "get" me. But even when they did, I met them with such fierce, unflinching stoicism that it makes me happy when I think back on it, and I would walk off along the "Bach" (small stream) telling myself stories to the sound of the gurgling water, staring at everything, but mainly at the ground in front of my feet with all the little sticks and gravel- my cinema screen.

Somehow I shook offthe stoicism, but I kept my silly, dreamy, romantic ideals. I watch the world around me more now, and mostly I like what I see. Two women shouting filth at each other on the bus is beautiful and intense, or coming home and focusing on a light switch that seems completely weird and unexpected when you give it your full attention, is a nugget of pleasure in the everyday. I urge everyone to try it- just pay really close attention to the exact appearance and position of a light switch, run your finger along the sides of it and remember it. If for nothing else, just so you can find it again when you're grappling around in the dark.


Cinema
And here I thought I'd be alone again,
And remember
How I always wanted to be my own mother-
A caring that begot my own conception,
Threw away all the keys and misery company-
I could have made myself anything then:
A child who wore nothing that did not look like flowers,
And I would have breastfed myself forever and never touched a fruit,
Riding the milk train sun in/sun out along the tapestry,
Dusk glazing orange on the walls.
I could have taught myself to smoke those hollow twigs* properly and lip-read all of Marilyn's lines;
I would never have stopped listening to Willy Alberti, or dance
On the balcony lit by raging candles until the wax stained the floor.
I would have worn out my purple camouflage dresses until the threads screamed "murder!",
And spun them anew from their grave.

I would have begun and ended, circled and fallen, all in a day and a night
Like a Bluebottle fly. I would have worn my end like a badge of honour
And meant it-
Honour and finality, and knowing "forever" in a day.






*There were little hollow branches of this bush that the cool kids smoked in the forests in Switz, and I always thought they were the epitome of rebellious chic.