E Is for Ellison

INVISIBLE CITIES XXVIII -- Cities and Signs: OLIVIA

London

OLIVIA: It makes sense that Olivia, the city, is a wealthy city, as olives are historically a symbol, not mention evidence, of wealth.

The opening sentence continues to emphasize the deconstrivist motif of the entire book (and, again, such an Umberto-Eco, at least as far as this blog is concerned, kind of motif it is), that words [or signs] and the things they represent are not necessarily the same thing--they occupy different spaces--though, as Polo tells the emperor, there is a connection between the two.

1. Is there a theme or plot-device (as it were) tying together each of the chapters?  If so, what's going on in chapter 4?
2. Does Olivia exist?
3. "If there really were an Olivia of mullioned windows and peacocks, ... it would be a wretched, black, fly-ridden hole....": why?  The literalist in me wants to say that, well, there must be a natural hierarchy supporting any wealthy city, that below the luscious green apex with its mansions and gold filigree and white peacocks, must be churning away a massive mechanism of industry with all its accompanying soot and slag.  I don't know if this is what Calvino's getting at.  Is he being less literal, more figurative?
4. And I just can't wrap my brain around the last sentence.  The abstraction is too much for me.  What do you make of it?

INVISIBLE CITIES VII -- Cities and Signs: TAMARA

Two things I'm wondering right now as I sit to put together my thoughts and questions for Tamara: [1] do all the cities' names have an applicable significance--are they the framework, like a poem's title, for understanding the contents; and [2] did Calvino work from some sort of map, and we're just not getting all the directions?  I'd love to be able to follow the geography and paths of Marco Polo's travels.

1. The name Tamara is fairly mundane compared to those of the previous cities.  Dominantly Russian and Hebrew, it has connections (particularly via its masculine counterpart--typical) to "palm tree" and "spice," yet this prosaic etymology seems superficially still to fit.  The stuff here is, ostensibly, pretty simple.  The type of this city is "Signs," an oft-used label of deconstructionists (think Barthes and Derrida) for what a word is in relationship to what it represents (for example, the word "computer" is the sign for the machine I'm currently holding on my lap).  But in the opening paragraph, Calvino shifts that use of "Signs"--and this brings us again, tangentially at least, to Eco--to the more general issue of signs across systems, called semiotics.   Calvino's examples are the paw print for the tiger, a marsh for a water course, and the hibiscus for Spring.  So what is Tamara a sign for?  (Or is this a non-issue as we're not even to the city yet?  Personally, I don't think so.  I think it's just a warm-up--an anticipation on the part of the traveler.  You?)
2. These signs, however, in the city seem, at least nearly always, to be metonymous or synecdochical for--related to--whatever they represent.  The deconstructionists would claim, I think obtusely, that it doesn't make any difference what the sign is.  Why not a paw print for Spring or scales for the barracks?  So what about the lions, towers, dolphins, and stars?
3. There's a system of signs--or maybe hierarchy:  scissors for the tailor, the silk for the wealthy, the custom clothing for social status (inelegant examples--sorry).  Where does the ladder end?
4. "Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages."
5. "And while you believe you are visiting Tamara...":  Every city so far has not been what it at first appears to be, and this gives each city--I'm not quite sure how to say it--almost a sense of non-being.  Tamara, for example, isn't really a city but just a book of signs telling you what to think and see and feel.  Though I hate to use this example, it's really just a matrix (yeah, like the movie) upon which something or someone populates the illusion.  Of course, what's the difference between this and the "real" thing?
6. Examine the format of the vignette: it starts with a gradual increase in the frequency of signs until within the, I guess, city limits it's dense and heavily layered, and then at the end, as we leave, the mass of signs decreases, lessens, though the traveler's eye (our eye) keeps looking for signs--out of habit, desperation, or because that's just how the human mind works?

"Kubla Khan," "Invisible Cities," and "An Approach to Literature"

"KK" in C's own hand

(For the record, it appears that Coleridge has the spelling deficiency, not Calvino or his translator, William Weaver (whom, by the way, Eco also happens to endorse), regarding the spelling of the 5th Great Kahn of the Mongol Empire.)

I stated in a comment earlier today that I believe Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" was an integral part in the creation of Calvino's Invisible Cities.  In the most recent three editions of Sunday Poetry, I've been digging through An Approach to Literature, assembled by Cleanth Brooks, John Thibaut Purser, and Robert Penn Warren (yes, that Robert Penn Warren), which, by the way, I happen to think is excellent and happens also to have a solid and succinct application of the interpretation of "Kubla Khan" to the general interpretation of poetry in general, and, as it happens, very specifically to Invisible Cities.  This, "Kubla Khan," is a poem that every literature student (at least those with an correlating BA) on the planet has read and torn apart.  I'm a big fan of the monster and have even taught it to my high school students.  Here it is (and, if your interested, I've looked over the Italian translation, and it appears to be right on--not that I'm an expert):

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Next, here is most (like 99.9%) of An Approach to Literature's word-for-word ... uhm ... approach:

“Kula Khan” raises in a most acute form the whole question of meaning in a poem and the poet’s intention.  …  We have Coleridge’s account account of how the poem was composed:

        In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimage:' 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.' The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to the room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but alas! without the after restoration of the latter.

        Can a poem dreamed up, as “Kubla Khan” was, be said to have a meaning?  Can it be said to express some ideas held by the poet?  But supposed it is not a poem dreamed up, but a discovery in mathematics or a chemical formula?  Does the mathematical discovery or the formula have any less validity because it was dreamed up or came in a flash?  We should have to say, no, its validity does not depend on how it came, it depends on its own nature.  We can, in fact, find many accounts of important scientific discoveries made quite literally in a dream or in some flash of intuition.  For instance, the great German chemist Kekule’ dreamed up two of his most important discoveries just as Coleridge dreamed up “Kubla Khan.”  But there is one important fact to be remembered: only poets dream up poems and only scientists dream up scientific discoveries.  In other words, the dream, the flash of intuition, or the moment of inspiration really sums up a long period of hard conscious word.

        Wordsworth, in the Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, has a very important remark on how meaning gets into poetry.  Having just said that he hopes his poems to be distinguished by a “worthy purpose,” he continues:

        Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose formally conceived: but habits of meditation have, I trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry along with them a purpose. If this opinion be erroneous, I can have little right to the name of a Poet.  For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic se sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.

The important point is that Wordsworth takes a poem that happens to come in a flash as embodying the ideas carefully developed over a long period of time.

        Sometimes, of course, a poet does start with a pretty clear notion of what he wants his poem to be and works systematically.  Sometimes he starts with on the vaguest feeling and with no defined theme.  Sometimes he may simply have a line or a phrase as a kind of germ.  But no matter how he starts, he is working toward a conception of the poem that will hold all the parts in significant relation to each other.  Therefore, as his general conception becomes clearer, he may find more and more need for going back and changing parts already composed.  The poem isn’t a way of saying something that could be said equally well another way.  Its “saying” is the whole poem, the quality of the imagery, the feel of the rhythm, the dramatic force, the ideas, and the meaning does not exist until the words are all in their order (emphasis added).

        It does not matter, then, whether the composition is slow and painful or easy and fast.  We do not have two kinds of poetry, one spontaneous and one calculated.  Without reference to the origin, we consider the quality of the poem, for the poem must deliver its own meaning.  Some of those meanings may have entered in a flash, out of the poet’s unconscious, but once they are absorbed into the poem they are part of the poem; they are ours and not the poet’s (emphasis added).

        Let us come back to “Kubla Khan.”  We know that it came to Coleridge in an opium dream.  But we also know the origin of almost every image and of many phrases in the poem, for John Livingston Lowes has tracked them down in Coleridge’s reading (The Road to Xanadu.  Houghton Mifflin Co. (1930), pp. 356-413).  But the materials from Coleridge’s reading do not give us the meaning of the poem any more than the fact of the composition under the influence of opium necessarily renders it meaningless.  We have to look at the poem itself.  The poem falls into two main sections.  The first describes the dome of pleasure, the garden, the chasm, the great fountain and the ancestral voices prophesying war.  The second, beginning with the line, “A damsel with a dulcimer,” says that music might rebuild the world of Xanadu—or rather, that the special music of the Abyssinian maid might rebuild the world—and if the poet could recapture that music all who saw him would recognize his strange power, both beautiful and terrible.  In other words, without treating the poem as an allegory and trying to make each detail equate with some notion, we can still take it to be a poem about creative imagination: “song,” the imaginative power, the poetic power, could “build a new dome in the air” and recreate the enchanted and ominous world of Xanadu.

        Does the fact that Coleridge considered the poem unfinished argue against this interpretation?  Probably not, because though from the point where the poem now ends many different lines of development might have been followed, we have a thing that is in itself now coherent and that comes to a significant climax.  This thing might have been a section in a larger work, but in default of that larger work it can stand alone.

        How do we know that Coleridge “intended” the poem to mean what we have just said it means?  Now we are back to our starting point.  We do not know that he “intended” anything.  He simply had a dream.  But we do know that this poem is very similar in tone and method to his great poem “The Ancient Mariner” and the great unfinished work “Christabel,” which were composed bit by bit and not dreamed up.  Slow or fast, opium or no opium, Coleridge wrote the same way, and it all came out of Coleridge, and there carries his characteristic themes and ideas.  …

Note to two sections I bolded and how they fit precisely with our discussion of Invisible Cities' introductory account between Polo and Khan.  Thoughts?

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana V -- chapter 4: PREPARATORY GARDENING AND PRUNING

1. For whatever reason, Yambo "skated" over his childhood and adolescence, rather than tell his wife all about it.  Something in his past, voluntarily or involuntarily, is being avoided.  I sense a parallel story--or nearly so, because why in the world would Eco not want these two lines to converge!  Of course, the "distant past" will be likely easier to unlock than the more recent.
2. The same paragraph of Paola's that gave us the skated youth also indicates some other traits/weaknesses of Yambo.  Does the information here lead you to any predictions?
3. Note the musical preference for pop over "high-culture" opera (though, of course, opera and "classical" music were the pop music of their day).
4. The general region of the pylorus combined with Yambo's knee-jerk descriptor of a "mysterious flame" seem to indicate something spiritual, or, considering Eco's atheism (and giving Yambo the benefit of the autobiographical doubt), existential--or vertiginous.  Thoughts?
5. Draw out the repeated connection between memory and collection, both of which, apparently, this book is all about.
6. I don't know if Eco is a Freudian or not, but I'm guessing that he likely is.  I'm not particularly eager to discuss at length his purchase at the flea market, but manifestations of potentially latent issues may be keys to unlocking the cave.
7. This is likely a stretch, the continued metaphor from the last chapter of flowers and deflowering; I wonder if there's a connection of some sort (and it seems more Joycean than Freudian--more literary than psychoanalytic--and along the lines of "Araby") between the the impenetrable cave and, say, the protected chalice, carried by "Araby"'s protagonist.  Are all the sexual undercurrents of this chapter indicative of the approaching "deflowering" of the locked-up, otherwise impenetrable Cave of Wonders?  Is this connection inherently flawed, as presupposing similar value upon Yambo's lost past as the flower of virginity (though, of course, he is a bit of an egomaniac)? *** But cultures may get in the way a little bit here, as Italy, as well as much of Europe, is much more sexually progressive than the United States; perhaps virginity is not quite the assumed treasure there as here (and we're losing that!).  Certainly The Virgin is one of the most significant emblems for Italy, as with all dominantly Catholic cultures, and most Christian cultures for that matter, of course, but, perhaps, as Mary was/is the epitomized Virgin, no other virgin need so aspire, so why bother at all?  I don't know.  I'm rambling.  But there seems to me to be something here.  I am, as always, interested in your thoughts.
8. Flowers, the most glorious of garden elements, may perhaps continue the line of Eden here.  But what happens if you deflower (as in memory and/or virginity, as discussed in 7) Eden?  I mean, is Yambo in his Eden now, or is he seeking to return to it wholly, or is it a step along the way (Solara, then, being Eden) to regain his past?  Yes, I know, this is all very, very speculative, but it's currently interesting me.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana II -- chapter 1: OF THE MEMORY and SOUL

I am not a skeptical reader.  Where so many people are mistrusting by nature, I'm, well, even gullible.  This applies as much to reading as it does to locking doors and triple-checking the curling iron or stove top.  When I read Steinbeck or Carroll, or even Joyce, I feel justified in my level of trust, as their writing so closely reflects the issues, weaknesses, and prejudices of their lives--not so much when I read Eco.  There's never a sense of autobiography when you read his books, except, perhaps for Mysterious Flame (more on that in a minute).  There's rarely that sense that his Freudian psyche rests just between the lines.  His craft is opaque, and it makes sense, in a literalist's kind of way: his writing is incredibly, even--and so it would seem if he didn't provide proof against it--impossibly, dense.  The problem with such authorial opacity for a trusting, gullible kinda guy like me, is that I believe there's indeed nothing on the other side of the glass.  Well, this isn't the case.  While Eco mostly leaves himself out of the book, as far as we can see or intuit or study out via the generally available biographical information, there is a lot here.  Surprisingly (at least to me), and at perhaps the level most literarily profound and snobby, there's a deeply Joycean philosophy at work here, which I will try, despite my amateurism, to point out (as it relates essentially to the most fundamental pieces of Modernism); at a less intimidating level (you know--without all the literary labels that otherwise identify and describe), there is a underlining, beautiful metaphor--even allegory--at work in this book which may even pose as a window, no matter how small or filmy, into Eco himself.  If there is a book of Eco's with anything autobiographical, this is it.  We just have to press through all the incredibly abundant intellectual bread crumbs to get there--not that I mind.

1. Where later we get visual mementos (flip or scroll through your copy of the book), when Yambo (this is a nickname: his real name is Giambattista Bodoni) first awakes, they come via literary quotations.  What is the thematic line running through these literary--poetic very visual, at least for words--references, and how are they so appropriate to the situation (you can get this without knowing the sources for all these quotations)?
2. Note the juxtaposition of technology looking quantitatively into Yambo's brain (barely mentioned) and the series of recollections--literary, historical, etcetera--which accord us a qualitative purview.  
3. I'm positing an idea that may work out to be nothing, but the context here offers possibility:  If the experience of Yambo's amnesia (the world that begins when he wakes up and ends, presumably, when he regains his memory) is a microcosm for mortal existence, what do you make of his standing up from his hospital bed?  While we're at it, what other parallels do you see between newborns and this 60-year-old (nearly) man?
4. Interesting the notion of the mirror's reflection (and this apart from Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass): with the exception of those few individuals with perfectly symmetrical faces, the face one sees in the mirror is not the same face that another sees.  The effect is less significant with both faces simultaneously before you, like Eco's double-portrait (above), but if you take it as truth (the difference between reflection and the "real"), how does it apply here?
5. "...from now on I think I will brush my teeth every day, it feels nice" (emphasis added).
6. There's an irony here: "...if we had to record and store all the stimuli we encounter, our memory would be a bedlam."
7. Also, a line shortly after that of 6 gives indication of the type of our allegory: "Where the brain stores memories, however, is still a matter of debate, and more than one area is certainly involved."  Have you already spotted it, especially while flipping/scrolling through the pages?
8. the Collegno amnesiac
9. Big question: Are we our memories?  In tandem with this, memories are nearly as "plastic," as says Yambo's doctor, as the mind.  How we perceive our own memories is practically never how they exactly happened.  Thoughts?
10. What if his wife were ugly?  I can't help but wonder--and it's impossible to prove one way or the other, but this is the romantic side of me--if there's some essence of his love reaching through the fog and affecting his impression of her.  Is she really so objectively pretty, or is the subjectivity of long love acting as, well, goggles for Yambo?
11. (By the way, Eco is a decided atheist.  This may affect some of your thoughts regarding the metaphors of the book and memory.  For instance, while reading I couldn't help thinking about what I believe, personally, about our "pre-existence," and how, as we don't remember living with God before birth, this might tie in somehow to Yambo's memory selectively excluding memories tied to emotion.)
12. I'd love to say that the fog of Northern Italy is legendary, but I don't know the legends.  What I do know is that my own experience with fog in Northern Italy would easily qualify as the stuff of legend!  Pea soup, even, is a modest modifier--more like damp, wool curtain, only ghostly....  Sorry.  I'll stop.
13. Metaphorically or not (just forget the diagnosis for a minute), why the lack of emotion, especially when seeing his kids and grandkids?  Does he feel remorse for not feelings nostalgic?  Is such really a source of connection to the soul?
14. "Remembering is a labor, not a luxury," and "Some one said that it acts like a convergent lens in a camera obscura: it focuses everything, and the image that results from it is much more beautiful than the original" (see number 9).

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana I -- CRITICAL RESPONSE and RESOURCES

Not sure if Mysterious Flame is worth effort?  Check out some bits and pieces about the book and its author at the following links:

• TIME's, "A Resounding Eco"
• American University Radio, Eco discusses the book (streaming audio)
• Harcourt interviews Eco
• Entertainment Weekly, "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" (very brief)
• The Christian Science Monitor, "Playing in the Attic of Italy under Il Duce"
• The New York Times, "The Book of Forgetting"

Some of these reviews I collected via literarywiki.org's list.  They also have a list of annotations for the book, which I don't intend to follow, at least not closely.

I have also found the entire book online.  You can find it here.

Yambo, protagonist and amnesiac,
and by request of his doctor, draws
his impression of Napoleon.

THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF QUEEN LOANA, by Umberto Eco

Interested in a good read with good discussion? 

We're starting Umberto Eco's 

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 

this coming Monday, March 14.

Come and join us!

It's amazing what you can get done at the leisurely pace of one chapter a day.

Writing through Literary Memory

Following is the opening section of Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.  Check out what he's done here.  Try it yourself:  write a narrative--short or long--using, as at least fifty percent, excerpts from works of writing that either fit the character or you as an author.

                “And what’s your name?”

                “Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”

                That is how it all began.

                I felt as if I had awoken from a long sleep, and yet I was still suspended in a milky gray.  Or else I was awake, but dreaming.  It was a strange dream, void of images, crowded with sounds.  As if I could not see, but could hear voices that were telling me what I should have been seeing.  And there were telling me that I could not see anything yet, only a haziness along the canals where the landscape dissolved.  Bruges, I said to myself, I was in Bruges.  Had I ever been to Bruges the Dead?  Where fog hovers between the towers like incense dreaming?  A gray city, sad as a tombstone with chrysanthemums, where mist hangs over the facades like tapestries...

                My soul was wiping the streetcar windows so it could drown in the moving fog of the headlamps.  Fog, my uncontaminated sister…  A thick, opaque fog, which enveloped the noises and called up shapeless phantoms…  Finally I came to a vast chasm and could see a colossal figure, wrapped in a shroud, its face the immaculate whiteness of snow.  My name is Arthur Gordon Pym.

                I was chewing fog.  Phantoms were passing, brushing me, melting.  Distant bulbs glimmering like will-o’-the-wisps in a graveyard…

                Someone is walking by my side, noiselessly, as if in bare feet, walking without heels, without shoes, without sandals.  A patch of fog grazes my cheek, a band of drunks is shouting down there, down by the ferry.  The ferry?  It is not me talking, it is the voices.

                Yet every so often it was as if I had opened my eyes and were seeing flashes.  I could hear voices: “Strictly speaking, Signora, it isn’t a coma….  No, don’t think about flat encephalograms, for heaven’s sake….  There’s reactivity….”

                Someone was aiming a light into my eyes, but after the light it was dark again.  I could feel the puncture of a needle, somewhere.  “You see, there’s withdrawal….”

                Maigret plunges into a fog so dense that he can’t even see where he’s stepping….  The fog teems with human shapes, swarms with an intense, mysterious life.  Maigret?  Elementary, my dear Watson, there are ten little Indians, and the hound of the Baskervilles vanishes into the fog.

                The gray vapor was gradually losing its grayness of tint, the heat of the water was extreme, and its milky hue was more evident than ever… And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us.

                I heard people talking around me, wanted to shout to let them know I was there.  There was a continuous drone, as though I were being devoured by celibate machines with whetted teeth.  I was in the penal colony.  I felt a weight on my head, as if they had slipped the iron mask onto my face.  I thought I saw sky blue lights.

                “There’s asymmetry of the pupillary diameters.”

                I had fragments of thoughts, clearly I was waking up, but I could not move.  If only I could stay awake.  Was I sleeping again?  Hours, days, centuries?

                The fog was black, the voices in the fog, the voices about the fog.  Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!  What language was that?  I seemed to be swimming in the sea, I felt I was near the beach but was unable to reach it.  No one saw me, and the tide was carrying me away again.

                “Please tell me something, please touch me.  I felt a hand on my forehead.  Such relief.  Another voice: “Signora, there are cases of patients who suddenly wake up and walk away under their own power.”

                Someone was disturbing me with an intermittent light, with the hum of a tuning fork.  It was as if they had put a jar of mustard under my nose, then a clove of garlic.  The earth has the odor of mushrooms.

                Other voices, but these from within: long laments of the steam engine, priests shapeless in the fog walking single file toward San Michele in Bosco.

                The sky is made of ash.  Fog up the river, fog down the river, fog biting the hands of the little match girl.  Chance people on the bridges to the Isle of Dogs look into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging under the brown fog…  I had not thought death had undone so many.  The odor of train station and soot.

                Another light, softer.  I seem to hear, through the fog, the sound of bagpipes starting up again on the heath.

                Another long sleep, perhaps.  Then a clearing, like being in a glass of water and anisette….