Sunday 22 June 2014

ECHO FRIENDLY

"Closure is, as in any fiction, a suspect quality, although here it is made manifest.  When the story no longer progresses, or when it cycles, or when you tire of the paths, the experience of reading it ends.  Even so, there are likely to be more opportunities than you think there are at first.  A word which doesn’t yield the first time you read a section may take you elsewhere if you choose it when you encounter the section again, and sometimes what seems like a loop, like memory, leads off again in another direction.  There is no simple way to say this."
 
13.20 pm
On the Stockholm subway I stand gazing at a wordless poster showing a green frog robot in a white space surrounded by coloured balls, while a woman stands staring at me.

16.35 pm
On the way back home, back on the subway, two small children, accompanied by their mother, come onto the platform carefully carrying a small rickety stretcher between them, the one at the front walking backwards, taking care not to stumble.  And on the stretcher sits what looks like a bag of sugar.  They weave their way along the platform through the waiting crowd and gradually disappear from view, and I just watch it for the few seconds it is there, I just watch it and in my mind I don’t even ask why, I don’t try and interpret the scene, I don’t even wonder if its real.  I just watch it.  This, I feel, is now my job.  More and more I just want to be the friendly echo of such moments, the writer of reverse histories, of platforms.

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