HAND-SET AND GRETEL

"The tree that springs up again, the locusts that devour the crops, 

the cancer that beats others at its own game, the mullahs who dissolve the 

Persian empire, the Zionists who loosen the hold of the mullahs, the concrete 

in the power station that cracks, the acrylic blues that consume other 

pigments, the lion that does not follow the predictions of the oracle..." 

 -- Bruno Latour

"On Mushashi Plain / the voice of a deer / is one inch long."

-- Basho

She's just finished painting for the day. Conversation begins as she cleans brushes and I finish assembling a playlist for her on Youtube. We talk about envelopes and clothes and platforms of anonymity, The vastness of the envelope, the length of a sleeve, the voice of Basho's deer, ghosts without watches or pens, voice recognition software and voice pretend-not-to-recognise software, CVs that fit on the back of a postcard, self-confidence and stillness, smiles that explain everything. We talk about anonymity as ornament: eloquent, disciplined, intentional, restrained. And anonymity as maze, as lost voice and disinheritance.

She asks me ìf there are any book titles I envy, that I wish could've been mine. I mention two: 'Operation Wandering Soul," and an essay by Helene Cixous entitled 'Letter-Beings and Time.'

We talk about languages, all the possible languages. The enchanted ruins of old grammars and etymologies  The prosaic formality of book titles compared to the fractured chaos of DJ playlists. The illusory distances between Jane Austen and Twitter and the literature-to-come, Hansel and Gretel in the age of google maps. Fairy tales told by maths professors. 

(more of his cartoons can be found here)

She tells me about a disappointing date she went on recently. 'We met, but we đidn't meet each other and we đidn't meet the unknown.'

She asks me for an image of passion, something from the world of a buddhist monk. "'Walking through fields of snow I counted the snowflakes.' - that's close to what I mean by passion. I mean a true feeling, poised within íts unrepeatability, yet graceful and modest. Neither limited nor reckless. But most of all freedom from compulsion. Deep sadness - with thanks. That's passion."

"I'm listening, attentive, I'm translating, I'm advancing in the 

scaled-down meaning ... the ascent goes from the hell of noise to 

the smaller and smaller paradise of the said."

 - Michael Serres, "Biogea"

I tell her about John Cage's recollections of D T Suzuki, the Japanese zen teacher at Columbia University in the sixties. He used to teach with the window open in the summer and the classroom looked out over the runways of La Guardia airport. Whenever a plane took off or landed the roar of the engines would drown out hís words. But he never paused or raised his voice. He just continued with his lecture regardless, allowing some of íts content to be erased in this way. One time he mentioned some zen master 'who lived in the 8th or 9th century... or maybe the 10th... or perhaps the 11th, or 12th...'

I tell her about a remark by the American writer Marilynne Robinson that I can't get out of my head at the moment, about humanity's "odd capacity for destitution." She gives me one of her special smiles - a lighthouse beam from the cliff-edge of rash decisions - that says 'I know, I know,...but don't forget your breadcrumb map...'