Författare: xikano_2

There was only that one chance. The crowds were thick enough to create a diversion and grab it. The moneybag lay idle in the counter, so it would be enough for a fire alarm to cause a small panic, stretch the arm, grab the dough and make a run for the door. The only obstacle would be the guard at the door, a buffy looking security agent who seemed in love with his job. He had the handcuffs in plain view, as well as a can of pepper spray and a mean looking baton, which he caressed with his left hand like a cat owner would his pet. Just then a scanty clad dame popped in distracting the guy who comported himself like a gentleman by pointing her to somewhere and then walking with her a bit. Gary saw his chance and walked towards the book section and stopped near the emergency fire alarm, pulled it and started to walk in a steady pace towards the counter so as not to raise suspicions. At the sound of the alarm everyone became disconcerted and moved quickly to get the heck out of there. Gary grabbed the dough just when the clerk was trying to figure out what was happening and made a dash for the door. He ran as fast as he could and swung the doors wide open with all his might.

Ernest didn’t feel like opening that can of beer, he had enough of the drudge monotony that was beginning to fill his daily evenings. So he picked up his keys, put his jacket on, checked that the radio was off and left his flat. Down the elevator, he came across a neighbor he was pissed at so he just gave him looks that killed, and then proceeded as they wlked out to cheerfully and out loud say hi to the first passerby he met just to piss off the neighbor even more. 9pm and he took a whiff at the city, it smelled like buttered popcorn does at the movies except that it was drizzling. So he kept walking, destination unknown, thinking maybe that it was time to pay a visit to his old girlfriend. A few blocks down the road he found a quarter, still wet he picked it up and started to flip it up in the air as passersby whisked along. Should he walk there and see her or should he take a cab? Should he just drop by or should he announce his visit? He kept a fast pace as he took off the hand from his palm to see how the quarter landed and see what fate had sealed for him.

Olga was in the mood for some shopping. She donned a miniskirt, and a shirt that fit like a glove that marked her voluptuous body at every curve. The stiletto high heel shoes put the extra touch in a very nice outfit. Looking outside the window she noticed some small rain drops in her pane. She grabbed an umbrella just in case her hairdo came into danger. Looking one last time in the mirror, she checked her deep red lipstick color in her lips, pursed them inwards and made a loud pop! sound from her mouth. She walked the stairs down to the street, it was busy and the city noise became a second background as a known passerby to her stopped her and a loudmouth crowd passed them by. They exchanged some salutatory greetings and after that she went her way swinging the unneeded umbrella in a circular motion as her hips moved to a salsa song in her head. A few blocks well into the city and ad caught her eye, 35% off on all Calvin Klein products. She went in.

The weather was gray and the city noises were a mishmash of screams, crying and yelling with that of cars passing by and a police car with its siren still on. The ambulances had the siren lights on, resembling a disco death of sorts. To the left of the sidewalk, were curious onlookers stared, were bundles of money and shiny coins scattered across. They stood in wait, like vultures, for a distraction from the only police car to have arrived at the scene of the accident. Some handcuffs lay strewn on the street, and a security guard sat by the sidewalk with a bruised head and what seemed to be blood running from his nose, dripping down to the wet asphalt mixing with the gasoline and oil stained flow of water near a gutter. Medics were attending to three people and one was already being carried inside the ambulance in what seemed to be an unconscious state, it seemed he had suffered a deep concussion to his head. Another man was lying down in the wet street complaining that the back of his legs hurt ‘like a motherfucker’ and that he might also have a fracture to his kneecaps. The other body, a female, had some red lipstick smeared in her face and a miniskirt displaying fine long looking legs and some broken high heel shoes. She was being pumped air and an injection being administered to her in her left arm glared all the lights that the city could reflect on its metal needle at that moment.

A small whisper coming from the crowd fought its way through the noise and the lights, ‘Hey! What happened here?’

Linguistics is one of those fields that have no real use for those of us who are natives to the language in question since much of it is already ingrained. It only becomes a useful tool when studying a foreign tongue. Reading Patrick White has given me the opportunity to put into use these tools in a new different way. Had it not been for those studies I think I would not have enjoyed Patrick White’s autobiography Flaws in the Glass as much.

In it you’ll find the usual British English with many instances of articles or conjunction elicitation. At times the nominalization is eye-catching in its use in Australian English such as fossicking and acquaintanceship, I mean, how do you fossick and since when did an acquaintance become a process? As far as I know how to use ‘acquaintance’ it is more of a stage rather than a continuous process.

There is a fondness for compounds too in the first 40 to 60 pages, almost as if the language didn’t, couldn’t do with single words and wasn’t enough to describe the environment. We have examples such as, double-youlker, biscuit-colored, not-so-successful, stage-struck, tea-trays, pansy-shaped, bomb-scarred, green-to-yellow tones and many many more, almost, as I suspect, as a manipulative technique on the part of the writer to emphasize his roots to the land. It is as if there is a need to stretch the language to the maximum; as if it is incessant to unify words to explain a whole.

Furthermore, you’ll find in the text that nouns enjoy some of the most wonderful modifiers like the following ones I loved so much that I underlined them and kept them for myself: the odd recce, those ochreus houses, a packet of foolscap, grubby at the edges, an etiolated beauty, the maker’s fretsaw and smiling treacly smiles. Possessive noun modifiers also gave a new twist to the tongue such as: a welter of adenoidal sighs … nosegay of pink oxalis. Some of the biggest noun modifiers ever brought uncountless giggles to my face, just take a peek at this:

It is also why an unlikely relationship between an Orthodox Greek and a lapsed Anglican egotist agnostic pantheist occultist existentialist would-be though failed Christian Australian has lasted forty years. p.102 (my italics) or

Language is indeed what makes this text so fresh and new despite the fact that it has been on the shelves a long time, I was rather thrilled in finding so many new words and phrasal verbs that I have never seen before, it refreshed my language. New phrasal verbs such as junk up and bawl out and even a few idioms like odd and sods sparked a curiosity that I hadn’t seen in ages.

I also increased my vocabulary immensely with new words that my CD ROM Macmillan (American) English dictionary lacked a definition for such as, saltpetre, planchette, latticed, caryatid, pinchbeck, gunyah, tittuping, thick fug, flibbertigibbets, archimandrites, sabras, a revenant, doxie and a slew of other vocabulary that the book indicates with an asterisks as if the language wasn’t foreign enough already.

Although there is a knack to hold in high esteem the mother country, the UK, the local language is used to de-colonize the mentality as the list of words above indicate, there is a preference for the local and new as opposed to the old and known.

Just as well because I somehow have an underlying belief that he uses/manipulates language to suit his aim, purpose, to convey his roots. There is a sense that he enjoys language so much that even when he breaks off from a relationship like the one with Sir William Dobell when they were ‘…belting out obscenities as hard as [they] could.’ He says, ‘I believe the chandelier tinkled a bit …’ this is giving language more power than one would expect.

On another plane, Patrick White, born in London, raised in Australia, is one of those expats who are more citizens of the world than the country they profess to belong to. Like Robert Graves, he just went through a minefield unscathed while serving in the army during WWII where he became a well-traveled man and during much of his stints abroad he picked up on the romantification that writers tend to exploit once in a foreign land. I often wondered as to the significance of geography in autobiographies and pondered what do we want to rub in or what kind of statements are we making when we do so? I mulled this as I went along reading getting the sense that the writer wanted to pull us into a glitzy glamor that we are suppose to know of and thereby cause some sort of envy.

Much of the autobiography is a retelling of uneventful nights made pleasurable by the uncanny eye of the narrator. He has dexterity to describe psychological states, like when he describes Baron Charles de Menasce smile, he says the following: ‘Round the corners of his mouth clung that faint webbing which cynicism leaves on those too tender to have faith in others and, worse still themselves.’

Homosexuality plays a significant role in identification but it is not the whole of the story here, while it is part of the telling, it is a part as much as in any other person when he or she says they are Catholic. There is much self-retrospection or reflexive thinking going on here as far as autobiographical interests go, so that at times you’ll read that what he is reliving all this, to tell you, the reader, he’ll say he is doing nothing more than ‘recycle shit’ yet for the same token you’ll here that what he is doing is ‘painting this self-portrait’. More oft than not, one gets the sense that more things are being said than what it is written.

Patrick White focuses much in the habits of others which begs the question, what does he want to say by making note of the habits of others? From my point of view, I think we have a case, if not an inkling, of an author wanting us to get closer to him.

The issue of influence is also a recurrent one, which necessarily raises the question: Why give a historical account of others and their fate in an autobiography? Worse yet, inevitable, as a writer, one becomes aware of one’s place, which is nearly God-like since one is retelling the fate of others as one sees fit, and according to one’s agenda. I say this because the juxtaposition with the fate of others, to that of ones own, can be used to justify ones being and is very much present in this autobiography. At times Flaws of Glass just plainly resorts to vignette biography to justify ones judgment of others. I find theses vignette biographies interesting though because they serve to reinforce how the author thought and gives great insight into the ontological and epistemological value system of the subject.

All in all this autobiography gives much into the account of the writer in question, the only flaw I saw was that of relying so much on the lives of others but in the end I guess we are all nothing but the product of our surroundings.

Last night I dreamt I held in my hand an apple sized kiwi.

I looked at it in bewilderment as I knew it to be a hybrid.

I went about to set my teeth to it so as to indulge in it.
I hazily lived this dream through patches of foggy scenes and much the way I would see the world without my glasses, blurryish.

The rupture of the light mustard, bristle texture of the kiwi peel ran much the way a fault would in the event of an earthquake as I with the strength of my hand, squeezed it.
The interiors were a tempting ambrosia my passive eyes knew of; I stared in wait of that juice enveloped in that transparent husk which soon would fill my flesh with uncountless experiences.

It was a scrumptious experience leaving me very unsatisfied.

Fiction is the idea that we must invent worlds and that we must somehow demonstrate, for the sheer purpose of the readers sake, a sort of description without giving too much of what is being told. The idea is to allow for the reader to make up its mind of what he or she is reading, in other words, I must leave the facts to stand on their own and that somehow my opinion shouldn’t butt between the reader and what I am writing. This is otherwise known as the Show don’t Tell technique used in most Creative Writing courses. A difficult task indeed because we are more prone to telling than showing. Indeed, one can even argue that at any given moment our culture inculcates didacticism as well. So it reflects very well in what we write hence those of us ambitious enough to embark in the mammoth enterprise of improving our writing skills often end up with our egos bruised and a healthy dose of reality check down our throats. If it so happens that the teacher in question doesn’t have a hidden agenda you’ll get all the support that a teacher really ought to give his or her students and with any luck the above mentioned technique will do wonders to the writing world or at the very least improve your everyday letter writing.

And if the teacher has a hidden agenda, your lucky if you end up at your local therapist couch, such is the nature of writing were words can be daggers sharp enough to cut through the thick muck that we call the world.

Fiction offers unlimited possibilities for the writer at hand who has something vital to say, indeed, for those of us who enjoy a good story, we are more than glad that such people exist, but we must also we willing to admit that the call for the quill and the ink has its own ilk.

’Voice’ is a hard subject. I feel I have no voice to which I can attach a determined form of writing. However, I do notice that my voice, when am writing, tends to be a melancholic one, a serious one and one that is reflective of what it is writing, As if the way I look at the past affects my writing. Rarely do I tend to write on the future. Perhaps I say I don’t have a voice because I exhaust my reading material by the time I reach to English. At any rate, voice is a fruitless job to think of at times. What is a voice anyways? When does one feel finished as a writer to be able to have a voice, does it mean that I lack one now? Does it mean that I must search a form of writing?

Curiously enough I’ve detected that one can become ’dried’ out if you will from inspiration. One is forced to go to the fountain of inspiration and fill ones chalice every now and then with other writers thoughts. Thoughts produce thoughts and now that I’ve been largely absent from literature I see a dearth of topics to write. On the other hand it has given me a great deal to think of my writing and how it works.

I want to write something beautiful, I don’t know what but I hope that I’ll soon know. I believe I like writing because somehow I too want to depict scenes. The problem is that I don’t have much to say. However, I like words so much I spend a great deal of time reading them. I am in the habit of always picking them up everywhere I find them. I make lists of them if I find strange and odd words and the more I know about a particular word the more I become interested in it. I find my relationship with words a strange one because I often find them difficult to deal with only to comeback to them later. I also tend to forget them very easily and at times it bothers me when I can’t spell them. It causes me to wonder if am not developing Alzheimer’s or some sort of mental ailment. But in general my relationship with words tends to be friendly. I gather great joy out of them when using them as I write along and quietly detect how words link phonetically to each other.

I don’t know what is it about the Swedish nature that somehow always seems to seep in my writing. Language reflects the environment it is said. Presumably my writing betrays this influence. What is it that appeals to me so much in this essence I seem to want to depict so bad? I mean, do I want to capture it? Do I want to somehow to convey through words the stillness that I as a nature observer detect as I absorb it when I walk in its midst? I guess it is more like wanting to recreate this atmosphere which brings to me so much delight.

The trees had been planted by some immigrants at the time Alaska belonged to Mother Russia. They were not native to this soil but adapted themselves very well, spreading far and wide across the valley and even proclaimed a natural reserve not so long ago. It now attracts tourists from afar as Siberia and a few dachas are built around its edges although government regulations have prohibited more be built.

Boris looked on this piece of land as if it were his. His ancestors were raised here and their ashes spread across the forest as was their last wish in this world. These mornings Boris woke up particularly early since a long awaited event was to take place at around these dates. Everyone waited for the right temperatures and weather conditions waking up expectantly in search of this long awaited act of nature. During a certain point in time during the early days of march the morning dew gave a delicate scent that locals were very well aware of and kept it a secret so that no brochure ever mentioned it. It was a time when the Atlantic dropped its water inland and the mild winds shook the top of the trees and the early spring warmth pressed the sticky pine oils from its bark. The drizzle made the soil dispel a natural smell that combined with the pine scents, a natural, rich in nature, odor enveloped the whole village for a period of two to three hours depending on the strenght of the sun.

It was during this season that one morning Boris caught eye of a woman. She sat in a position that resembled the Yoga position of Lotus, dressed in a white garb, and on his property. She seemed peaceful and her hair hung loose. Unsure wether to go there and start a conversation, Boris continued looking on until the lady got up. Aware that she was being observed, she turned her head towards Boris and waved from afar a salutatory greeting. Boris waved back but continued where he was as the lady went about her way.

There was only the air left between you and me

As the moon glared behind the translucent clouds Inringed by the rainbow of your smile

Thinking about you, sucking warmth of your memory

Your lips Your smell,

Your intoxicating love scent

Greg drew sketches of objects his irises picked up ’outside him’ he says.

Carl on the other side of the studio wrote sketches. He used words like puzzle bits and his pencil like a brush. ’The mind’ he said, ’is the canvas’.

There was a particular one that drew my attention, so to speak. It had words which I fail to recall one by one but suffice to say it was about a tree. The ground were it stood describes ’an April, early spring, just when the sun began to melt away winter’s remaining snowfall.’ ’The dirt was wet’, I remember it said, ’soft enough to leave a knee imprint of a careful tending gardner.’ The soil gave the impression of being brown and rich with an occasional patch of a new shoots of green grass and here and there even a weed was mentioned as part of the scene ’waking to the mild efforts of the sun and its exertion to warm the land and do away with its cold, arctic wind competitor.’

There after the sketch read a bit more different because the task at hand required a great deal of dexterity on the part of the describer. The sketcher must be well versed in the study of forestry in as much as vocabulary goes. One would argue, to paraphrase Gertrud Stein, a tree is a tree is a tree. No doubt the masses would agree but to the artist at hand, every word is like a different shade of color added to the ’object’ being retold in words. There is no doubt that color is recalled on the mind, in ’the canvas’, of the reader but it in itself is not solely the only part which is vital.

Linear aspects must also be taken into account. The background provides dimensionality to the description. The word is in the stone age compared to the eye. So as my eyes scanned the sketch for those qualities, my soul looked into my mind for these details, ever so important to the description, in order to see what this poor alphabetical system of ours had to offer. Needless to say, if the sketch manages to redraw its purpose/object in the mind and then recreate the image, see able by the ocular capacity of the mind, then it has succeeded.

But I will digress no more. Please bear in mind that I’m merely paraphrasing here because I can never really describe what I saw in that written sketch but merely tell you what I saw.

The tree had been trimmed and what seemed attempts at hacking its life from the ground with little obvious successes. It stood, the tale tells, ’between a half corroded fence and some rusty railroads where commuter trains passed by every fifteen minutes’. The tree was dark-brown in color, almost surely filled with soot due to the surrounding industrial complex and the passing of the locomotives. Branches spread out and the bark gave it a respectful and peaceful look. Its branches weren’t that thick, I read, but sturdy enough for a child to cling to it and swing about somewhat. It was more in looks like the hand of a rheumatic in old age except these boughs were sprouting new leaves, receiving nourishment, no doubt, from winter’s past snow.

It was a sign of hope in a wasteland.