rosie

A flutter of books.

'Now I measured that first growing year by the widening of fields that became visible to me, the new tricks of dressing and getting about with which I became gradually endowed. I could open the kitchen door by screwing myself into a ball and leaping and banging the latch with my fist. I could climb into the high bed by using the ironwork as a ladder. I could whistle, but I couldn't lace my shoes. Life became a series of experiments which brought grief or the rewards of accomplishment: a pondering of patterns and mysteries in the house, while time hung golden and suspended, and one's body, from leaping and climbing, took on the rigid insanity of an insect, petrified as it were for hours together, breathing and watching. Watching the grains of dust fall in the sunny room, following an ant from its cradle to the grave, going over the knots in the bedroom ceiling — knots that ran like Negroes int he dusk of dawn, or moved stealthily from board to board, but which settled again in the wax light of day no more monstrous than fossils in coal.

These knots on the bedroom ceiling were the whole range of the world, and over them my eyes went endlessly voyaging in that long primeval light of waking to which a child is condemned. They were archipelagos in a sea of blood-coloured varnish, they were armies grouped and united against me, they were the alphabet of a macabre tongue, the first book I ever learned to read.'

- Laurie Lee

Cider with Rosie

(Page 11)


My childhood is a complete blur.
I remember the strangest of details that when stitched together make some semblance of a memory.
A red lamp, the specific and unique scent of both my grandparents' houses, the red lightbulb that cast an eerie glow down my Dad's parents' staircase, the gated and gravelled driveway of my first home, the white car that we drove away in when leaving said home - but for some reason i remember this from the outside looking in.
Why?
I couldn't tell you.
Memories are strange and fickle things, and reading the first in Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy made me envious of how vivid and lyrical his memories are and how fiercely he clung to them.

'Richard wrote a mental diary in his head.

Dear Diary, he began. On Friday I had a job, a fiance, a home, and a life that made sense. (Well, as much as any life makes sense). Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement and I tried to be Good Samaritan. Now I've got no fiance, no home, no job, and I'm walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal fruit fly.'


- Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere
(Page 116)


It's taken me years to finally read Mr Gaiman's eccentric tale of sub-London adventures.
But it's buried itself inside my head now and i'm not letting it go.
Not for all the wine in Atlantis.
(read the book and you'll know what i mean)

'Left alone in the room, Maya was suddenly overwhelmed by the silence and emptiness around her. As long as her fiancé had been with her and they have been talking she had been able to keep her surroundings out of her mind. Things had made sense to her, more or less. There was an element of risk in what she was engaged in, but it had seemed manageable. Now, however, as silence, gloom, and decay seeped from every chink in the brickwork and from every shadowy recess, the events in which she had become involved appeared to her in a sombre, baleful light as somehow threatening, terrifying. She had an aching presentiment of having taken the first steps on a downward path that would lead her inexorably into evil. She was afraid of the castle; afraid of her headstrong fiancé; afraid, above all, of herself, of the menace that she sensed lurking in the depths of her nature, at the root of her rash, impetuous, greedy thirst for happiness.

"But I feel so drawn!" she said in an awed whisper, standing motionless in the middle of the room. "I feel so drawn!"'

- Witold Gombrowicz

Possessed

(Page 54)

There is a rather large Waterstones situated on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow.
It's my mecca.
And when perusing the fiction section of any bookstore, i like to take my time and work alphabetically.
Y'know, the logical way.
But this means i never quite make it to the end before i'm dragged away to engage in other fun things like indulging in obscenely sugary, iced drinks from Starbucks or skulking into Forbidden Planet to look for new reading material.
But once, a long time ago, i managed to make it to P.
Glorious P.
The 16th letter.
More than half way.
And what did i find?
A Polish gothic novel with murder, violent and sinister romance and a haunted castle.
What more could i possibly ask for?
Oh yes.
For it to be good.
And it was.
Oh so gloriously good.
It was like watching a car crash or listening to Bright Eyes, 'At The Bottom of Everything'.
There's only one calamitous conclusion and you cannot possibly take your eyes away.
Apparently, i love certain disaster.
Who knew?

Speaking of trips to the bookstore.
I might have just happened to stumble i.e. make a beeline into Perth's Waterstones last week and i may have bought some stuff.
This was me being restrained.
I literally stood for ten minutes trying to decide which books to put back and failing miserably because i damn well wanted them all!
To hell with bankruptcy! 

Buy all the books!
...
I may be running out of room.
But my future library's starting to look pretty good.
...
I need help.

And to top it all off, my Dad gave me a present.

The origin of Superman.
But i won't see Dean Cain (the best Superman and don't you forget it!) when i read it.
Oh no.
That spot it reserved solely for Mr Tim Riggins.
Because he's beautiful and i found John Carter hilarious.

Again, i may need help.


Ps. This is what i'm reading now.

Mostly because i watched the tv series and turned into a sappy puddle of aww-based yuck.
It wasn't pretty.


Books books books books books.