Paul Saich 2008

More disorganised than usual this year as I'd been struggling with a couple of laptop failures that have involved losing a lot of stuff! Monday being work, instead I SA4Qated on Sunday 3rd and late in the afternoon left the following three. First, pinned to the gates of a building site where some new flats are being built:-

When I was in London Judith and I did what we always did - walked and talked, dined in intimate little restaurants, went to concerts, opera, theatre, and films but little by little the flavour went out of it. And more and more I'd wake at night to find myself sitting up in bed and leaning forward into the darkness, listening to the ravens and the dead, waiting like Elijah with his head between his knees.

from Fremder

Next, stuck to a wall next to the ATM of a bank in town,

"...The strings were still sounding as a song died on the air and I could feel in my throat that the singing had come from me but I could remember nothing of it. I tasted blood in my mouth and there was blood coming out of my nose. On both sides of the river the trees came down to the water's edge and swayed their tops against the sky."

"There opened to you underworld," I said, "and you knew everything. I remember how it was, I remember her weeping."

"Yes," said the head, "in the weeping of Eurydice there opened to me underworld."
Here the voice of the head of Orpheus paused; the mottled sunlight and the leafy shade, the dragonflies and the river vanished into greyness. A desolation and silence filled my mind. The sky was very pale. I wanted to keep the mottled sunlight and the leafy shade, the dragonflies, the honeyed air. I closed my eyes and waited for the voice to continue.

I heard the distant traffic on Putney Bridge, the rush of cars on the Lower Richmond Road. I opened my eyes. The water was lapping at my feet and the head was well out into the middle of the Thames moving downriver against the tide. I was surprised, I had expected the story to be finished in one telling. As I watched the head out of sight I felt abandoned and forlorn but there was no heart pain so I suppose in some way it was still with me.

from The Medusa Frequency

And finally, stuck on a noticeboard by a bus stop:-

"As we get on, you see, the fugal system has a little more trouble spacing out the subject and answer, and if entries come too fast it's rather like Sunday traffic on the M4. And there you jolly well are with a blocked stretto. Now, the only known function of the stretto being to channel entries, it's of no use whatever if it's blocked. You'll feel a little breathless and as if everything is piling up inside you from behind while at the same time you're quite unable to move forward to get away from it. Naturally that's distressing, not to mention the possibility of worse trouble later on. What I say is Do it to stretto before stretto, you know, does it to you."

Dr Pink's voice had become a long and massive Sunday afternoon through which Kleinzeit drowsed like a fly in amber. At the end of his remarks it was Monday morning, a change not necessarily for the better. Kleinzeit felt breathless and as if everything was piling up inside him from behind while at the same time he was quite unable to move forward to get away from it. It's marvellous the way Dr Pink knows exactly how it feels, he thought. I wish I'd never met him.

from Kleinzeit