On Being Bookless ( as if ....)



Listening to I can Hear The Heart Beating by Yo La Tengo

I finished reading Love Lessons yesterday and while the content and detail left me in no doubt that it was written about the time it describes, it just seemed too constructed to be a genuine diary - more like a re-imagining along with a heavy edit - though if that was heavily edited I wonder about how scandalous the real-stuff would have been at the time. On top of that, the structure made me think that the end of the book had been decided to give the whole thing a novelistic feel. The whole thing seems to have Joan Wyndham in the role of literary courtesan (meaning not a courtesan who can write but a writer who can tease their readers - if you excuse the image - but you knew that didn't you?) . - Hacker point - where does the bloody punctuation go?

I am now in the weird state of not knowing what to read next. I am usually reading several books at once and there is always something to be getting on with but I seem to have popped-the-stack and left myself with dippable detritus rather than any meaty prose to be started and finished (or of course jettisoned). I never stay in this state for very long but the process of deciding the next book is often very satisfying even if the choice is not. And in fact in the few minutes it has taken to write this, I have realised that I mentioned something from the preface to something I should be getting on with and it has now been firmly pushed onto the stack for completion.

This article fills me with horror. I'd not thought about it until a mate at college said that he'd rather go blind than deaf and I instantly had to agree with him. I have lost bits of my hearing over the years th0ugh strangely it seems to be mid-range unlike the normal age-related high-frequency loss that has lost my dad the ability to hear birdsong which was always important to him. To actually lose the hearing in one ear and to use the third dimension as the writer puts it would seem like hell. Total loss would at least leave you gradually forgetting what pleasure was out there but to keep being reminded of what you had lost would be more than I think I could handle. I suppose I only have the high-frequency loss to look forward to along with the already-noticeable deterioration in my eyesight - well at least the inability to focus on anything less than the length of a small paperback away from my nose. I used to be able to focus on the end of my little finger with my hand outstretched and my thumb touching my nose. I am under orders to get glasses like The Doctor wears should it come to that. Having said all this, apart from reading small text in very dim light I'm not sure I have any problem.