peter morrison 2009

I posted bits of this on Twitter, i posted the whole extract on LiveJournal and Blogger. And intended to leave the physical piece of paper somewhere this evening. However, the weather has taken a turn, and unfortunately I decided that coming home was the more sensible option. But instead, I've written the passage on the back of a postcard, which I am going to send to a Hoban reading friend in Oslo.

Angelica's Grotto
Russell Hoban
Session Five

"I'm lost," said Klein.
"In what sense?" said Dr DeVere.
"In the sense of I don't know where I am."
"Can you elaborate?"
"I am of a people who have always been fearless navigators of the mind. The dead sail with us as we make our way from idea to idea, steering by the stars and sea-marks named by those before us. Such a wide, wide ocean! But always know where you are by the waves, by the swells; the winds blow from not the usual quarters. Black squalls come, and heavy seas, the stars are blotted out, the wind moans in the rigging. You suddenly realise that you might never make your landfall, you might drown. A great wave hits the boat and takes you with it, you feel yourself going down, down, down and then you don't know any more which way is up and you can't hold your breath a moment longer and the wild wide ocean fills your lungs and then you're gone: down among the dead men."
Dr DeVere kept respectfully silent for a few moments.
"It's good that you could get that out," he said.
"Is it? I almost don't know who I am. I try to think of how I came to this and it's hard to believe how it all began. I read this lousy piece in The Times and Boom! my world fell apart."
"Ronnie Lang said some good things in his time: one of them was, 'The breakdown can be the breakthrough .'"
"Depends on what you break through to, I should think."