Exergue

It's a beautiful Friday evening, and I'm alone and already in for the night. There's brown rice in the rice-cooker, a stack of books on the coffee table, and a DVD waiting next to the television. Ah, what a life I lead. I spent the day reading (in the park) on cryptography, reading (by the office window) on millinnerianism, reading (once again, in the park) on corporeality, and finally reading (with Jeehyun at Tuscany) on grammatology. Despite the intended sarcasm, I enjoy the work; I only wish that my days of it might conclude with a dinner out, dancing of some sort perhaps, and the hands of another body.

There's little time for such, as is. And what little time there is, I give to my writing - itself the time in which the times of my work and life commingle. But the novel, which I originally conceived as an open system, permeated by the day-to-day, experiences more comings and goings from the books I read (and the conversations with Jeehyun) than it does the actual events of what we usually describe as "living." Sometimes I even think that the various things I call texts and my interactions with them through thought or writing provide the very depth of experience I long for "out there" in the real of romance, of friendship and of family.

What would it mean to accept this, to turn from the outside to the inside of writing? Or must I, like Stephen (see The Library's Grain #66), remain the child poised between the two, moved by the question's implacable demand and the never-finished writing of its answer? How do others stop their ears? How do they, after all, trade the dance of words for hands that hold?