Paul Saich 2006

I discovered this site a few days after the Some-Poasyum event last year so didn’t take part but I made a mental note to remember it – then forgot about it. A couple of weeks ago in chatting with a friend who travels on the Piccadilly line to Russell Square I suddenly remembered that there was something I was supposed to be doing – and fortunately was a few days ahead of myself.

A few words about the choices of locations and quotes.

Locations – no plan. Any plan I might have had (which was rather vague and involved travelling to South Ken and the Science Museum on the tube and then meandering back to Liverpool St on foot and by bus) went out of the window with the news that much of the Circle was out of action, no Metropolitan, and no Piccadilly. So I went for a bit of a walk and let locations crop up as and when.

For the quotes – I chose five. (I was trying to make up for missing last year but also I just couldn’t choose between them.) One is from Fremder, three from Amaryllis Night and Day and one from Her Name was Lola. I tried to find things that might strike a chord for people. The quotes were all chosen as examples of different sorts of romance (and there’s plenty of that!) Russ’s books all seem to me to be love stories – rather romantic, all the better for being eccentric – and all make me feel different about the world as I read them. For that reason, I’ve deliberately not read them all – I’ve a few that I’ve not started as I suppose I am saving them up for when I need refuelling. I think Amaryllis might be my favourite. And I had to choose something from Her Name was Lola seeing as Max travels in on the Piccadilly Line to Russell Square, which was the start point for me in taking part this year.

I was up at 7am on the day but due to a few distractions, didn’t get out of the house until about 9.30am. The train to London stops at Stratford so my lack of a plan was itself derailed when I decided at the last minute to get off there and leave something on the Central Line – to float across London from East to West. However people kept asking me questions about tube stations – I didn’t realise I looked especially tube-informed! – so instead of leaving anything I got off at Liverpool St and left the first quote on a seat near the platform.

As always, her face came to me half-turned-away. Probably she wouldn’t want to be taken for granted after last night’s glim. With that in mind I went to the first place where we’d seen each other in the unglim world: the Klein-bottle display in the Science Museum. There I waited as I’d done at the town library when I was fourteen and hoping for a glimpse of a girl I hadn’t yet dared to speak to. I seemed to have a lot of breath in me and I had to keep exhaling.

from Amaryllis Night and Day

And then, stuck on the information board of a public phone on the concourse at Liverpool St station, the opening of Fremder:-

In the deep chill and the darkness of the Fourth Galaxy, in the black sparkle of deep space, oh so lonely, see a figure in a blue coverall tumbling over and over as it comes towards you: no space suit, no helmet, no oxygen. Is he dead? He can’t be alive, can he? What’s in his mind now? Are there pictures frozen in his mind?

from Fremder

When I first read Fremder it took me quite a while to get through the first few pages as I kept stopping and returning to what seemed to me to be an impossibly cinematic and romantic start to a story.

Liverpool St was supposed to be the start point of my half-baked plan but it was here that the plan unbaked entirely when I discovered the disruptions on the tube. I’d had notions of leaving quotes circulating around London by leaving a lot on the Circle Line – not today, mate! Well maybe if I walked to Holborn and got the Piccadilly Line to – Nope! Back to the Central Line, I went as far as Chancery Lane. Before leaving, I taped to the inside of the sliding doors:-

‘But I need you to stay with me longer than that, I need you not to wake up too soon.’

‘ “Not wake up too soon!” I don’t think I’ve been asked that before. You need me to stay with you in a dream? I don’t understand that. And I don’t understand how you managed to get into my dream when I’ve never seen you before in my waking life.’

‘It wasn’t your dream, it was mine. I brought you into it because I tuned in to you. I wasn’t sure I’d connected, though, until you turned up at the Balsamic.’

‘You call it “the Balsamic” as if it’s a place you’re very familiar with.’

‘Too true.’

‘You often wait there for the bus to Finsey-Obay?’

She folded her arms across her chest and hunched her shoulders as if she were cold. ‘More often than I’d like,’ she said, looking past me.

from Amaryllis Night and Day

Off the train, out and into the world above. Along High Holborn I taped the Fremder quote to a wall near a cash point and then the following to the central reservation of the crossing with Southampton Row:-

How quickly the strange becomes the usual! I was in love with a woman who was most responsive to me when we were both asleep. Between the glim and the unglim, where was reality? I went out on the balcony and looked to the west. There was the moon, one night past the full, sailing serenely in and out of the cloud-wrack. Perhaps Amaryllis too was looking at it now. It was 01:35.

from Amaryllis Night and Day

Next stop Shaftesbury Avenue. I’d planned to leave this in a phone box:-

‘A notable show of restraint,’ says Lola. ‘Would you like to help me out of this corset?’

‘Yes,’ says Max in his bed in Poole Hospital. The essence of Lola is feeding into him as it were intravenously. Never until now has he felt the charm of her, the strangeness, the sweetness and the pathos of her running in his veins like this. ‘Lola, Lola, Lola,’ he whispers.

‘Did you call me?’ says Nurse Laura, approaching on sturdy footsteps.

‘Just talking to myself,’ says Max.

from Her Name Was Lola

I wasn’t entirely sure about taping a quote mentioning corsets and nurses over ads for the various “services”… and at the last moment changed my mind. Instead I taped it to the side of a building near a phone box. As I emerged from behind the pillar, I nearly bumped into an enormous policeman who seemed as startled as I. I had half a mind to explain myself but didn’t – I just continued down the street. I saw him glance at it but I’ve no idea if he read it or took it down or did anything at all about it. The Chinese lanterns around Gerrard Street obviously reminded me of Amaryllis! Not part of the non-plan and it was nice to be caught off-guard.

There wasn’t a colossal amount of thought going into the rest as I’d had a tiring and odd few days. So – Piccadilly Circus and then a cafe nearby for coffee and on leaving I taped a quote to the table. Went for a wander back along Regents St. It sounded as though there was some sort of disturbance at Oxford Circus. Two of the quotes I left in a branch of Waterstone’s in Oxford Street, and two in the HMV opposite Bond St tube. Carried on wandering west but then at some point decided I’d gone far enough so I crossed the street to make my way back. At Oxford Circus there was a woman talking about God and having a fulfilling life. There was lots of fulfilment. She was very insistent. She also had a loudhailer.

I bought Come Dance with Me in Borders on Oxford St (as well as a new copy of Kleinzeit – no idea where the old one is) and left the “How quickly the strange becomes the usual…” quote folded up into a display copy of Ian McEwan’s Atonement as I was leaving the shop. Then went for a quick (1pm) drink at the Pillars of Hercules. Just tomato juice (on the grounds of overdoing it the night before) but it was one of those pre-mixed ones that was over-sauced. I’m not convinced I felt any better on leaving the pub than I’d done on entering. I left the “bus for Finsey-Obay” quote from Amaryllis on a table near the back of the pub where it’s quite dark.

Nearly at the end. I left the Finsey-Obay quote in a display copy of the new Hilary Mantel book in Borders on Charing Cross Road, Fremder in Virgin on Oxford Street (in between copies of the new Franz Ferdinand CD). Taped one to the front of a vending machine on the Central Line platform at Tottenham Court Road tube, then went back to Liverpool St. The one I’d left by the public phone earlier was still taped there so it lasted at least two and a half hours! A quote folded into a book in Waterstone’s in Chelmsford, and a quote into a copy of the new Murakami. Then – that was that! Off to chat to a friend, watch the rugby with people, etc. Coincidentally I was out at a birthday bash (for two people) in the evening.

A belated Happy Birthday!

And happy birthday to all the rest of you… whenever the solar system gets around to making it your day. It’s been really nice hearing your thoughts.

Cheerio,

Paul

Joe Cooper 2006

Dear all,

My dad would like to apologise for not dropping his yellow paper in time this year. The truth is I've been taking up quite a lot of his time lately. He doesn't seem to mind looking after me, in fact I think he really enjoys it, but it doesn't give him a lot of time to do the things he used to do, such as walking around London for hours leaving Hoban quotes all over the place and helping to organise Some-Poasyums (Some-Poasya? Somes-Poasyum? Whatever). He did have a quote he wanted to drop this year and even got as far as writing it down but before he could do anything with it he'd fallen asleep. We'd not long arrived at grandma's and he nodded off in grandad's chair... it makes me laugh. I mean how exhausting can an 11-month-old baby be? But there you go. I don't take it personally. I tried waking him up by 4qating him with his own sheet of yellow paper but it didn't really work and grandma told me to leave him alone for a while so he could get some sleep. Then the next thing I knew he was off out for a well-earned dinner with mum and then I nodded off myself and then it was morning and SA4QE day was over. He came to grandma's to collect me and I waved the sheet of yellow paper at him but he didn't seem to want to talk about it much. I think in fact he felt a bit ashamed that he'd missed out on SA4QE for the first time since it started.

Anyway dad says he did manage to make a late 4qation this afternoon - he hopes it still counts - and will post full details of why he chose it together with a photo on the SA4QE website along with all the other fabulous quotes that have been dropped elsewhere in the world (I've been reading them since secretly subscribing to the Kraken while dad was snoring another time last week - great stuff!) I've got the quote itself here - it's from Linger Awhile, which I haven't read yet, but if the rest of the book is anything like the passage dad chose from it I'm really looking forward to it. Here it comes:

When I was a child we had a large mirror that took up most of the width of the rear wall in the front room. It had no frame and was fastened flush against the wall. It showed what was in front of it but I used to put my face against the very edge and try to see around it to what it wasn't showing. I never could but I knew that the mirror wasn't giving me the whole picture. I'm still trying to see around the edge.

from Linger Awhile

Nice eh? Well, I'd better be off now because dad'll be awake again any minute.

Lots of love,

Joe Squid

6th February 2006.

Fig 1. Baby Squid retrieves yellow paper quotation.

Fig 2. Baby Squid approaches sleeping dad.

Fig 3. Baby Squid atempts to 4qate sleeping dad.

Fig 4. Mission accomplished! Dad wakes up to the sound of russling yellow paper.

Richard Cooper 2006

 

For SA4QE 2006 a particular quote didn’t spring to mind, at least not one I hadn’t already used on any of my previous 4qations. In fact in some ways I regret 4qating so promiscuously in 2003 because I dropped enough quotes in one day then to last a lifetime, and although it was great fun at the time it satisfied my hunger to 4qate and I’ve rarely felt quite as hungry since.

To complicate matters, SA4QE day this year fell on a Saturday. In years past this would have given me more time to find a quote and go out and drop it, but, with the birth of my little boy last March, 2006 is, to say the least, not like other years. Both my wife Koy and I work full time, so we take turns in looking after Joe, and not only is Saturday one of my days, but tonight Koy and I are going out for dinner for the first time in ages and Joe is staying at his grandparents'. So in addition to the usual routine of changing, feeding, playing and (most sappingly) frustrating his quest to bring down the contents of the flat on top of himself, there's the added task of getting all his bottles, pyjamas, nappies, wipes, creams, spoons, jars of food, extra clothes and the kitchen sink together into one bag that I can actually lift, and getting it and Joe to my mum and dad's... as fantastic as it is, having a baby has turned "not enough hours in the day" from a casual expression into a way of life.

However, as the ancient Chinese proverb has it, "Not being hungry is no excuse not to eat when someone offers you a fortune cookie", so as I rush out the door with baby under one arm and holdall under the other (and the moment under the other), with my spare tentacles I pick up my copy of Linger Awhile and a sheet of yellow paper (from a ream of gold or “apricot” A4 I bought from Ryman’s for the Some-Poasyum last year) and head for the street.

I thoroughly enjoyed Linger Awhile and felt it was Russ’s best book for several years, and as I only finished reading it a few weeks ago much of it is still (in principle at least) fresh in my mind. Under the circumstances, this is important: in years past as SA4QE day has approached I’ve spent several hours looking slowly through my Hoban collection for something to 4qate, but this year this obviously hasn't been possible. I also think it would be appropriate to use the opportunity of SA4QE day to promote Russ’s latest book (if, that is, leaving a quote from a book on a sheet of yellow A4 in a random public place doesn’t somewhat stretch the definition of “promote”).

We arrive at my mum and dad's and to my great relief they fuss over Joe immediately, giving me the chance to survey Linger Awhile from the comfort of my dad's armchair. My memory of the novel is that there are many great quotes and passages in it, but now that I skim through as attentively as possible in the little time I have before meeting my wife, they prove surprisingly slippery. I think it was Graham Greene who said he had a habit of marking the books he read to indicate passages that particularly struck him for future reference; I have a habit of not doing this, as much as I’d often like to, mainly because my instinct is not to risk spoiling the enjoyment of any future reading by distracting yourself with something that caught your eye on a previous reading, especially if it means you only ever re-read the bits you've marked rather than the book as a whole. Then again, this instinct is not unconnected to my inner Felix who likes to keep books (and everything else) pristine, and the suspicion that this has triumphed over the writer in me who wants to scribble all over them gives me a momentary identity crisis. Whatever's the case, not for the first time it becomes clear to me that the interest factor of many (if not all) passages one reads comes in context, in the act of reading the text, not just from the text itself; reading is not a passive occupation, it's creative and interactive, and the DNA of a book gets mixed up with the DNA of your own self and personality and situation and experience until it's a whole other unique thing altogether - and not just once, but each time you re-read it.

After about 45 minutes of speed-reading the book up to page 78 I have three or four passages that I would be more than happy to be seen out 4qating with. Curiously, all are from chapters narrated by Irving Goodman – perhaps, as his name suggests, because he’s a good man (the only truly good character in the book, perhaps, apart from Grace Kowalski), the one with all the self-knowledge and memories and poetry and melancholy in him. While Istvan Fallok is guilty of greed, and Chauncey Lim of opportunism, Irving is only really guilty of falling in love. Even though Irving ends up the same way as the other two, at least he does so having realised the depth of his mistake, and that the woman he loves is a real one and not the Frankenstein’s monster he has helped to create. Although Irving is a melancholy character, it’s maybe the melancholy that saves him; it is that capacity for reflection – as rotten as he feels – that leads him to understand what he’s done wrong. The other two, while not exactly carrying on regardless, don’t have enough melancholy in them to realise the consequences of what they’re doing and stop it before it runs out of control. Irving indicates several times through his memories of his childhood that he’s never been a confident person, but if anything it’s Istvan’s and Chauncey’s confidence that causes their undoing.

It’s one of Irving’s memories of his childhood that I finally choose:

When I was a child we had a large mirror that took up most of the width of the rear wall in the front room. It had no frame and was fastened flush against the wall. It showed what was in front of it but I used to put my face against the very edge and try to see around it to what it wasn’t showing. I never could but I knew that the mirror wasn’t giving me the whole picture. I’m still trying to see around the edge.

from Linger Awhile

When I first read this passage I felt sad because Irving is 83 and he’s still looking round the edge of the mirror, as if he never learnt the lesson that he can’t see what’s there. When I thought about it some more though the fact that he's 83 and still looking struck me as profoundly uplifting.

It’s ironic then that it’s this admirable need to see around the edge that gets him and a number of other people into deep trouble. But it’s in keeping with the best of Russ’s characters, the ones who take the risks and go on quests and have dangerous adventures, that he follows his feelings and keeps trying to find his way around the edge. Without characters who do that, there are no stories, there is no drama, there is no heroism in life. And at least Irving does it for love, or what he believes is love anyway.

My mum and dad have a full-length mirror in their hallway, this one tall and narrow and with a wooden frame, so not quite the same as the one described by Irving Goodman, but still whenever we visit, Joe always crawls over to the mirror, stands right up against it, looks at it for a bit and then tries to see what’s behind and around the edge of it. So, Joe, a word of advice – try and stay out of trouble if you can, but don’t ever stop looking.

Anyway, 4qationwise, as luck would have it I end up falling asleep in dad's armchair (a reflection on my lifestyle rather than Russ's book) and the next thing I know Joe is attempting to 4qate me with my own yellow paper. Then my wife rings from the station and, as we've booked a table for 7pm on the basis that we have to make room for another booking by 9, I rush out and the quote gets left behind... oh well. In an attempt to repent I order for my starter goat's cheese salad a la russe and toast Russ's 81st with a nice glass of house red.

In the end, the quote doesn't get 4qated on SA4QE day itself but the following Monday I nip out in my lunch hour and head for a very Hobanesque spot not far from my office in Waterloo, where I sellotape the quote around the pole of a lion-tastic traffic sign in Stamford Street, with King's College (helpfully yellow), the IMAX cinema and London Eye bringing up the rear:

Further reflections...

My dad said once that his earliest memory is of looking at his mother’s dressing table, which was one of those old-fashioned ones like a desk with three large hinged mirrors around it, triptych-like; my dad says he must have been about two at the time and remembers going round behind the mirrors to see what was there. So with this and the other two examples above maybe children and mirrors simply have a thing going on. If so, I wouldn’t know as I can’t remember having a mirror memory myself. That said, a couple of the (many) comic strips I read as a kid spring to mind. In one, a single-frame cartoon, a man stands in front of a mirror about to have a shave, his reflection upside-down. He looks angry and early-morning irritable. “Okay,” he barks, “who turned the mirror upside-down again?”

The second cartoon is from Garfield. In the first frame, the eponymous cat walks towards a mirror. In the second frame he stands in front of it, but where his reflection should be is Snoopy instead. In the third frame he looks towards the reader and says, “I can see it’s going to be one of those Mondays.”

All of these mirror stories converge again towards Hoban as I now remember at least three great mirror quotes from his other books:

Sometimes I think that this whole thing, this whole business of a world that keeps waking itself up and bothering to go on every day, is necessary only as a manifestation of the intolerable. The intolerable is like H.G. Wells's invisible man, it has to put on clothes in order to be seen. So it dresses itself up in a world. Possibly it looks in a mirror but my imagination doesn't go that far. (Turtle Diary)

I exist, said the mirror.

What about me? said Kleinzeit.

Not my problem, said the mirror. (Kleinzeit)


An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of a night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do. (The Medusa Frequency)

Something that Irving Goodman would concur with, I’m sure.

Diana Slickman 2006

It is a Hobanesque day in Chicago this February 4th. The sky is low and precipitating slightly - sometimes rain, sometimes sleet, sometimes snow.

It's grey, cold, and things feel close. I wandered around my neighborhood, yellow paper in my coat pocket, looking into the shops and eateries to see which one wanted to be part of the SA4QE. There's a resale shop that just moved into an old theater close to my house on Clark Street. The theater was called Calo and for a long time it was the home of the Griffin Theater company. The resale shop is called The Brown Elephant, as the sales from it benefit the Howard Brown Clinic. My OED tells me that "calo" is a Latin word for a camp servant, and also the combining form of a Greek word meaning beautiful. So here is a beautiful servant formerly of the performing arts camp, with two powerful beasts in her life. In I went.

One of the things I like about this celebration is its covert nature. I get to feel like a spy for a little while, as though I am making an important drop for another operative to pick up later. I circled around the shop for a while, again waiting for inspiration to strike or for fate to show her hand. Finally I decided that hiding the thing in plain sight was the sneakiest thing to do, so I unfolded my yellow paper, laid it on a wooden end table, and casually strolled away. Mission accomplished! Happy birthday, Russ!

Here's what the paper said:

Running today, said the morning looking in at Kleinzeit's window.
Kleinzeit got up. Running today, he said to the bathroom mirror.
Not me, said the mirror. No legs.
Kleinzeit put on his new tracksuit, his new running shoes.
Let's go, said the shoes. Motion! Speed! Youth!
No speed, said Kleinzeit. And I'm not young.
Shit, said the shoes. Let's get moving anyhow.

from Kleinzeit

February 4th is Russell Hoban's birthday and if you've found this yellow paper, you're celebrating it with him.

Steve Long 2006

I had no preconceived ideas about where I was going to leave my yellow paper this year, but found myself outside Tring zoological museum, and then inside the museum looking at lion and bat and turtle displays. I left the yellow paper on a bench between the bats and the turtles. If I had thought about it before I might have chosen a quotation from a more relevant book, but the one I had copied out was this:

There are all kinds of things that have no name and can't be described, really scary dreadful things that live in the mind and maybe you say, "They're only in the mind." Then suddenly you find that you yourself are in your mind with them and there's no escape. "Oh God! How did I get into my mind! Please, please let me out!" And God smiles and says, "Sorry, your mind is the only place there is."

from The Bear in Max Ernst's Bedroom

(The Moment Under the Moment)

All the best,

Steve

Alida Allison 2006

My yellow paper quote for 2006, placed randomly around Ouray, Colorado:

One wakes up in the morning and puts on oneself. Everyone has experienced this: the self must be put on before any garment, and there is inevitably a pause as it were a caesure in the going forward of things before the self is put on. Why is this? It is because our mortal identity is not the primary one, not the profound, not the deep one. No, what wakes up from sleep is not Tiglath-Pileser or Peter Schlemiel or Pilgermann; it is simpy raw undifferentiated being, brute being with nothing driving it but the forward motion imparted to it by the original explosion of being into the universe. For a fraction of a moment it is itself only; then it must with joy or terror put on that identity taken on with mortal birth, that identity that each morning is the cumulative total of its mortal days and nights, that self old or young, sick or well, brave or cowardly, beautiful or ugly, whole or mutilated, that is one's lot.

from Pilgermann

Bes',

alida

Olaf Schneider 2006

Interactive animations inspired by Russell Hoban writings

NOTE: Be sure to have the sound turned on for this Flash animation, and to give it a few moments to load. It opens in a new window as it is hosted externally. You need to have installed Flash version 5 or later to view it. If you don't, download it for free.

Enjoy! - Olaf

Soho streetlights

Olaf notes: "This year I didn't manage to drop my yellow paper in time. Anyhow, my only excuse is that I wanted to drop my SA4QE close to the place of Istvan Fallok in Soho. And then there was this hopping thing which attacked me. When I got my consciousness back, the yellow paper was gone but I did a photograph of the site of crime..."

Lisa Greenstein 2006

My first choice got tucked between the red velvet cushions at a bar called Joburg, where the barman said he'd run out of juice but could put together something tall and cool (and he did):

Whoosh! High in the sky goes Rocket Max. Showers of stars explode over the Coliseum, it's like a movie. The stick falls back to earth in St Martin's Lane. "This is it," he says to his mind. "This is the real thing. This is my destiny woman." All through the shop heads turn. "Did I say that out loud?" he says.

"Audibly," says Lola. Blushing.

"What do I do now?" says Max.

from Her Name was Lola

I left another copy on the chair of the next table in a burger bar called Royale Kitchen. The waitress (picture Amaryllis with an Afro and an apron) found it, and read it as she rolled cigarettes in the back of the restaurant. 'It's a quotation,' she told me as I walked past to the toilets.

Where I left the other:

Darkness roared with the lion, the night stalked with the silence of him.

The lion was. Ignorant of non-existence he existed. Ignorant of self he was a sunlit violence with calm joy at the centre of it, he was the violence of being-as-hunter constantly renewed in the devouring of non-being. The wheel had been when he ran tawny on the plain, printing his motion on the grateful air. He had died biting the wheel that went on and left him dead. The wheel continued, the lion continued. He was intact, diminished by nothing, increased by nothing, absolute. He ate meat or he did not eat meat, was seen or unseen, known when there was knowledge of him, unknown when there was not. But always he was. For him there were no maps, no places, no time. Beneath his tread the round earth rolled, the wheel turned, bearing him back to death and life again.

Through his lion-being drifted stars and blackness, morning sang, night soothed, dawn burst its daylight from the womb of vital terror. Oceans heaved, frail bridges spanned the winding track of days, the rising air sang lion-flight in wings of birds. In clocks ticked lion-time. It pulsed in heartbeats, footsteps walking all unknowing, souls of guilt and sorrow, souls of love and pain. He had been called, he had come. He was.

from The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

Happy birthday Russ!

Love Lisa

Antti Savela 2006

Feb 4 2006. A sunny day.

John liked to draw monsters.

He drew monsters that looked like puddings with teeth, he drew monsters that had hundreds of eyes and odd numbers of ears, he drew scaly monsters, furry monsters, vegetable and mineral monsters, and unheard-of monsters that were so monstrous they had to be invisible so they wouldn't scare themselves to death. He drew red, yellow, blue, green, and purple monsters that were all blotchy with different colours.

from Monsters

Happy birthday Russ. And best wishes to all!

Roland Clare 2006

"I bet the stories you could tell would make a hell of a book," I said, "If only you knew how to get them down on paper."

He shrugged. "Not everything needs to be written down."

from The Man With The Dagger
(The Moment under The Moment)

from top: Framed in the broken window of an electricity sub-station, content for a plastic storage-box for sale on the pavement outside a shop and amid the travel brochures: preferable to an expensive flight to Florida

Mortal life is a difficult proposition because hardly anything can be experienced as what it actually is; everything is time-distorted. In childhood we wait for things that seem too long in coming, we wait for treats, for presents, for festivals and holidays, we wait for growing up. There is so much waiting that suddenly childhood itself is gone with all that was being waited for. As grown-ups we find ourselves pitched headlong down a steep and slippery slide with everything hurtling towards us at a great speed; some things smash us full in the face, others streak past half-glimpsed or unseen; everything has happened before we were ready for it. Only after the hurly-burly of mortal life is over can one have a really good look at what has happened; unburdened by choice and unthreatened by consequences one is able to sort through the half-glimpses of a lifetime and find perhaps one or two workable fragments of recognition.

from Pilgermann

from top: Among the floral bouquets on sale in a shopping precinct, in a shopping precinct in the Xerox machine at a 'Convenience Store' for those with nothing of their own to copy, and jutting from an ornamental urn in the graveyard

Emmae Gibson 2006

Have You Heard The One About...

I don’t want to go to Hoban Square any more.

The other night I dreamt of bus timetables. The ones I’d looked up showed long strings of inseparable numbers, places, times dep. and arr., fares, concessions, symbols, exceptions; map legend heaven for any transport buff or tourist. I’ve been seeing this bus in town - not dreaming it - ice cream white, pink and blue no.417, destination board saying, HOBAN SQUARE, and I’ve let it be. Bus and I, biding each other’s time, nodding as we pass, until the day I would be able to get on it, the wistful cousin, perhaps, of FULHAM BROADWAY. February 4th fairly beckoned, but it didn’t happen, I was on the west coast.

Back in the region of Auld Reekie, I wanted to see Hoban Square, whatever it was, half an hour away in Broxburn, before I lose my eyesight straining after receding, FIRST buses, so I took the first rain-free morning off, parked the car between leafless trees and walked to the bus stop, my golden yellow papers discreet in a Harvey Nich’s bag. How happily they hummed, quotations, sources and links, all printed out in glossy black Lydian!

“Do you know why it’s called Hoban Square?” I asked a comfy-looking woman in the queue. She seemed to think I was from Channel Four News the way she looked round, before admitting she didn’t know.

“It’s jist whaur the bus feenishes up!” she said, fingering her Bus Pass.

“You mean – the end of the line – a bus station?”

“Naw, naw. Jista kinda turn, y’ken?”

I’d been tempted to research the Hoban connection, but refrained; rather wanted to meet the Square square-on, uninfluenced, the raw, gritty anti-climax I expected. As for Broxburn, it’s named from the Scots word, brock, meaning badger, and burn, meaning stream. Stones and oceans in miniature, with Frances and co! Couldn’t be all bad.

The single-decker came sprayed with seasonal chocolate. The driver’s name badge said, Archie McDowell. He looked as if he’d been born and bred in the driver’s seat and his grey eyes assured me I would ask for nothing but, “Hoban Square, please.”

“He was a Bishop,” Archie said, as soon as I opened my mouth again, (honestly, do I still look like a tourist?) “Catholic” he added benevolently, his eyes seeming to turn green, and white, football strip, home game.

“Oh?” and that curious word, ‘orangeism’ flashed across my mind.

The Bishop was a good omen, though, because I was carrying quotes from the most religious book, perhaps, that R.H. has written. (I haven’t read the one about the Actress yet.) Further, by the guttural voice level of the passengers, old, young, sheepskin coated or belly naked, all seemed to have known each other since Christ left Dunbarton.

Some blurb-writers do not romanticize: ‘Broxburn developed from a village in the 19th century on the Edinburgh-Glasgow road, into a centre-point for transporting people and goods. The discovery of coal, iron and shale resulted in an increase in population and the creation of gigantic waste ‘bings’ which surround the area.’ Top marks for real estate truth. The once mysterious ‘bings’ are apparently full of waste population.

“What d’you expect -” hissed the bus as it shoogled between roundabouts, cemeteries, supermarkets and lazy traffic lights, “- Elvis Presley Boulevard?”

Brown winter fields and three golf courses later, came Ardbeg storage, Outlet Crystal, many Italian restaurants, churches, hairdressers, banks and pubs. We had just passed one called the BADGERS BROOK, when Archie suddenly took a sharp turn off Main Street Scotland and we trundled up a hill. Expectation rose in the climb through the evergreen tended pages of Homes & Gardens. An incredible sun came out, the sky showed blue. I could see at the top of the hill, another bare, red-brown hill beyond the rooftops - and knew at once it was a bing. I’d never been so close to one before. In no time at all I was about to alight, the last visible passenger, at Hoban Square.

Where was it?

The comfy-looking woman was right. And the Bishop, if he were alive, would not be writing home about it, unless there is a language of papal graffiti. I had hoped I would be wrong, but I was right too, about the nitty-gritty, suburban realism. In the burst of midday light, one green-framed bus shelter in a dull lay-by. A man and woman appeared from inside and got on the bus, which left immediately. Apart from any aesthetic concerns, where would I stick the yellow paper?

The sharp breeze seemed to belong here, in what constituted the Square; adjoining the pavement, a three-sided row of grey, single-storey dwellings, the kind they build for elderly people, one central tree, concrete slabs, no sign of human life and the bing waiting eerily on high. I walked to one end where a green park began with paths leading round the back towards open fields, the reddish layered heights of the man-made mountain beyond. It reminded me of the skirted mesa hills between El Paso and Las Cruces, only they were ochre and sunbaked.

Leaving Hoban Square behind I tightened my scarf and made my way up the sloping field, the wind upscaling as I went. At that point I heard a whistle. A little brown dog barking in the distance, running towards me, figure of a man some way off. His pet looked like a cross between Corgi and Jack Russell. Fearing for my ankles and cursing Diana Slickman, I tacked sideways, but the dog changed direction too, ignoring his master’s voice.

A swinging choreography ensued, which eventually brought the three of us face to face in the middle of the field. The dog continued to dance on the grass, the man who was comfy-looking and almost elderly, but had escaped waste population, obviously thought I was lost.

“Can I help you?”

I usually get on well with older men, so I entered into the swing of the bing thing. Which pleased him no end. If I had wanted a tour guide…in a sheepskin deerstalker…. We stood surveying the alien landscape while he answered my questions. This bing was shale, which had been mined here, paraffin oil extracted from it, then dumped to the side, ever higher and higher. Deep, deep mines, thousands of men, millions of tons of shale. Wild horses run around on it now, and optimistic trees struggle on the top of the “red ash.”

“No’ very nice, is it? There’s no saying what else might be buried in there,” he said grimly. “You’re actually standin’ on a smaller bing. The Council put grass on it.”

Underfoot was close enough. The sun had vanished and we walked back down to escape the icy bing-wind. He blamed the Council for the poor amenities, the vandalized signposts pointing in the wrong directions, the Square of senior citizens’ homes being bought up. As other dogs, leads and people began to appear on the path, he took a biscuit out of his pocket for every dog.

“One more question,” I said, before he and his dog crossed the road. “The Hoban connection?”

“Oh, he was a Canon. In the parish here. About the 1930’s.”

Canon Hoban! So much for your Bishop, Archie. Then he asked me a question.

“Are you… a tourist… or have you come to live in Broxburn?”

I told him the whole truth, though not the whole canon of Hoban, which didn’t faze him; I think his lunch might have been waiting on the table. Tomorrow if he passes the bus shelter, he might see the yellow page I blutak’d inside, and wonder at the colourful word-pictures of Amaryllis Night And Day:

A bus was coming. No numbers on it, only the destination, FINSEY-OBEY. Not a place I’d heard of. The bus was a tall and delicate thing of bamboo and rice paper, sheets of yellow, orange and pink pasted together and candlelit from within like a Japanese lantern. It was much bigger than a double-decker, towering so high above me that even when I tilted my head back I couldn’t see the top of it.

I went back to the lopsided signpost and put one there for passing dogs, masters and mistresses. If the gold withers away, the words will still be written on the wind:

Sometimes between two people it’s as if one is a lock and one is a key and they take turns at being lock and key; but at other times it’s as if both are keys or both are locks and nothing can be done.

I hope someone else will ponder one of the personal favourites I left on an empty seat in the return bus, driven by a replacement Archie. Out of Pilgermann context it might not seem to be about what it is really about, but to me, is part of the essential R.H:

The miracle has happened, no explanations are necessary. With a miracle one is immediately thou and the rest follows, the rest has been going on before one arrived, the moment is prepared and ready.

The centre of time is, as I have said, the waiting. This is now off the centre, this the motion of the everything, the action of the universe, the destined world-line of the soul, the living heart of the mystery.

Back in my hometown car park, I pinned a leafless, young tree with the news:

Loneliness… is the essential human condition. Everything else is gravy.

Thank you Diana. Bings of blessings on you and the unfolding worlds of your brainchild, sa4qe!

Kerry Power 2006

This year I chose a quotation from The Mouse and his Child:

There's nothing beyond the last visible dog but us.

Yearly trek down to the Melbourne underground, Parliament Station, the bench seat, Platform 4.

Val Bucknall 2006

 

One of the things I like about Russ is his willingness to talk about his writing process, a topic that fascinates me:

… when you've got to where you know how not to get in your own way you can tune into things and write whatever passes through your head without having to worry about whether it's right or wrong. The process itself becomes the product, and then there are no risks? Well, here I can only speak from my own experience. I find that in order to tune in to things I have to spend about ten hours a day at my desk. I have to stay up late and let the night into me so that the bricks of reason move apart and the other comes in through the cracks. …you have to let the night back in because it is the mother and the mother is where everything comes from. You have to let the night back in and you have to listen to what wants to speak to you.

from The Bear in Max Ernst's Bedroom
(The Moment under The Moment)

I made several copies and on each I put:

Happy Birthday to Russell Hoban, 81 years old on 4.2.06
www.thoughtcat.com/sa4qe

I left a copy on a park bench in Kingsmeadow, Burnt Ash Lane, Bromley; one amongst the newspapers on a table in Burnt Ash Library; another on a seat outside St Andrew's Church; one among the books in the Oxfam shop; one on the stationary counter in Martin's newsagent's shop, and the last in a box containing second-hand books outside an antiques shop in Plaistow Lane.

It was cold. There were only a few people about; some of these were near the yellow papers, but I didn't see anyone pick one up. I felt quite anxious not to be seen leaving them there in case someone suspected the fact that I am a bit odd. I did enjoy thinking that other Krakenites were doing the same thing in lots of different places today.

Billy Frugal 2006

SA4QE 2006 was my first. I was working that day, helping to run a tree planting holiday in the Pennines, and my SA4QE action consisted of showing the participants my quote and getting them to add their thoughts to the yellow paper. The quote was:

Those of us who think about the empty spaces tend to paint pictures, write books, or compose music. There are many talented people who never will become painters, writers or composers; the talent is in them but not the empty spaces where art happens.

from Amaryllis Night and Day

My three favorite responses were these:

1. To experience empty space, is to sit fully present in the moment, witnessing, accepting the experience as it is, nothing to change, nothing to do, exept allow the out-breath of the moment, and the in-breath of the next moment: a place where we can tuly experience our connectedness to the one-ness and perfection of the ever-unfolding nature of love exploring itself.

2. What do people do with empty spaces? They fill 'em up of course. They can't leave them alone. Images, stories, sounds do the job nicely.

3. Maybe their talent is in connection with people, challenging injustice, making friends, changing lives, planting trees, making waves, laughing and loving and living life to the ultimate!! Empty spaces are good too, but you might use them just to have a bath, hug your child, do yoga or walk in the countryside.

Cheers for a great day.

Hugh Bowden 2006

Saturday not being a working day (if the division between working and non-working days means anything for academics expected to publish, and therefore to have things worth publishing, and therefore to keep thinking about what is worth writing more or less all the time - other academics on the list will nod in agreement; everyone else will say, 'what on earth is he complaining about? He could always get a real job,' an argument it is difficult convincingly to refute) I was not restricted to SA4Quating in central London as I have for the last two years. But various matters prevented me from roaming too far from home, and anyway, the good people of Finsbury Park might benefit from my spreading the word on yellow paper.

This year I felt that I wanted something musical, so the word on yellow paper was this:

As we watched me tumbling over and over in frozen stillness she advanced the audio beam to its next track and The Art of Fugue, performed by Marie-Claire Alain, came stalking into the room on its centuries-high legs. It was as if Bach had with spells and numbers called forth some cosmic monster that would eat me up, eat up the world with its implacable and insatiable logic.

from Fremder

Someone down the road sings in a choral society, and she advertises concerts by tying posters (A4) to a tree on the pavement, in thin plastic covers. I thought that my contribution would fit there well, so that is where it went, with yesterday's date and the SA4QE URL at the bottom.

An Hugh Bis

Lindsay Edmunds 2006

Dear Krakes,

The weather is stormy in Pennsylvania -- snow by tonight -- and I am just back from SA4Qation 2006. This year's quotation is from The Moment Under the Moment:

We make stories because we are story. The fabric of our myths and folk-tales is in us from before birth. The action systems of the universe are the origin of life and stories. The pattern of blue-green algae and the numinous wings of the Great Nebula in Orion and the runic scrawl of human chromosomes are stories.

from Household Tales
(The Moment under The Moment)

Underneath the quotation I wrote:

Today is the 81st birthday of Pennsylvania-born writer Russell Hoban. He lives in London now; he still writes books. Some fans of his work celebrate his birthday each year by leaving quotations from his books in random places -- all over the world.

Our story is here:
www.thoughtcat.com/sa4qe

I left the quotation on a cafe table in a big Barnes & Noble bookstore. It seemed right.

Deena Omar 2006

London 2006. My first SA4QE. Kleinzeit was my first Hoban book. My first 4qate was the first mention of the yellow paper. Seemed fitting to place it somewhere in the underground, so I carefully tucked it into the edge of the map of the underground on the northbound platform of the northern line at Mornington Crescent. It looked great in all its yellow glory and I felt sure that, despite the emptiness of the platform at that moment, someone would soon come along and not be able to resist reading it. However, the train brought with it an enormous gust of air (as it always does) and, as I boarded, I noticed my yellow paper diving off the map, swirling about madly for a moment before landing gracefully on the floor, still clean on both sides and as yet unstepped-on.

Kleinzeit got out of the train, poured into the morning rush in the corridor. Among the feet he saw a sheet of yellow paper, A4 size, on the floor, unstepped-on. He picked it up. Clean on both sides. He put it in his attaché case. He rode up on the escalator, looking up the skirt of the girl nine steps above him. Bottom of the morning, he said to himself.

from Kleinzeit

This next one I couldn't resist. Camden Town is my local tube station, the one I use almost everyday. The station was packed with weekend visitors and tourists and the usual Saturday afternoon mania. I just had time to place the paper next to the `Please stand on the right' sign at the bottom of the escalators before the wind seemed to carry me, the crowds, the escalators and, for all I know, the yellow paper, up and up into the light.

Camden Station is the windiest tube station I know. Coming up on the escalator with my hair flying I felt as if I was coming out of a dark place into the light, and I laughed because that's what I was actually doing.

from Turtle Diary

Leaving the windiest of tube stations, I headed for the Ladies public toilets situated on the traffic island at the bottom of Camden Parkway. The stairs lead me once more underground, to the entrance and a No Loitering sign. In a cubicle, amongst a flattened empty can of Red Bull and a discarded needle, I loitered awhile then placed the following:

There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time wil have its happenings out and every place the same. What ever eats mus shit.

from Riddley Walker

My intention was for the next 4qate to happen in St. Michael's Church on Camden Road, near the station. I sensed I would need to be particularly furtive 4quating in a church. It was not meant to be, however, as the church was closed, so the following quote ended up folded and placed between `A history of African Christianity 1950 – 1975' and `Laboratory Earth' in the MIND second hand shop just over the road. I like to think it was very happy there.

There is a mystery that even God cannot fathom, nor can he give the law of it on two stone tablets. He cannot speak what there are no words for; he needs divers to dive into it; he needs wrestlers to wrestle with it, singers to sing it, lovers to love it. He cannot deal with it alone, he must find helpers, and for this does he blind some and maim others.

from Pilgermann

My last 4qate, also from Pilgermann, was in the monstrous and soul free zone that is the Barbican Centre. I had intended this quote for a cinema, but ended up here for a concert and putting it behind something by Kafka in Farringdon's (the bookshop). Like all the others, the quote was followed by Russ' name, relevant book title and the SA4QE url. So, somewhere in here is the story of my first SA4QE.

One of the great things about the Kraken is not always needing to explain.

…a story is what remains when you leave out most of the action; a story is a coherent sequence of picture cards: One: Samson in the vineyards of Timnah; Two: the lion comes roaring at Samson; Three: Samson tears the lion apart. That's a story but actually the main part of the action may have been that there was a butterfly in Samson's field of vision the whole time. The picture cards don't show the butterfly because if they did they would have to explain it. But you can't explain the butterfly.

from Pilgermann

Happy Birthday Mr. Hoban. Happy Birthday Kraken.

Love Deena

Vernon Ó Heigheartaigh 2006

I'm new to sa4qe, but a sometime visitor and member of the Kraken (Ernie Óh). First participant from Ireland, by the look of things.

The first of two quotes was placed above at Letterkenny General Hospital and at Fintra Strand (in a non-littering fashion):

'Do you think the rain remembers, Fremder?'

'I think everything remembers, Pythia.'

'…especially the rain. It remembers when the world was new, remembers how the seas filled up. Think of all the midnights and the dawns the rain remembers, how many there were before a single word was spoken. Neither pleasant palaces nor wild dogs to howl in them, only the steam rising as the seas filled up, only the white mist on the water in the ancient mornings.'

from Fremder

The second was posted at the telephone kiosk at the bottom of Donegal Courthouse steps:

EURYDICE

The sea is full of marvels but there are no answers in it. There are remote beaches where certain things are insisted upon. There are crabs whose bodies are like human faces, angry and disappointed faces with mouth parts gabbling silently, urgently. These faces are carried on jointed legs, they hurry along the tidal edge drivenly surviving from one moment to the next; there is no time to lose if their line of angry and disappointed faces is to continue.

In the spring tides the female crab releases her ten thousand eggs, each one a potential angry and disappointed face and most of them will be eaten by the creatures of the sea. The female stands not like a face on legs, she stands huge, heroic and technological, like a spacecraft poised on elaborately articulated legs; she stands like the most modern thing in the world and she expels into the sea these ten thousand ancient faces.

from The Medusa Frequency

Sorry, no photos, but I may be able to take one of Fintra Strand - 'sea and remembering' may still be there.

--Ernie Óh

peter morrison 2006

hello all. happy russ's birthday.

i sat last night and wrote out my SA4QE on one of the nice sheets of yellow paper i liberated from work. carried it around all day with me. took me awhile to decide where to put it. then as i headed towards HMV it hit me. leave it in the world cinema section, and given the nature of my quote, preferably with a horror film. i opted for the japanese ring trilogy box set, i felt given the themes of linger awhile that was a very appropriate place to leave a quote about a video-generated hopping thing...

Everything was going round and round with the ground sometimes tilting up and sometimes down while out of the corner of my eye I saw some great big hopping thing coming after me. I sprinted down Cecil Court, dodged through the traffic in St. Martin's Lane with the thing close behind, made a sharp right towards the Coliseum, then left and left again and so on trying to lose it but when I reached the lab it was still hot on my heels. Once I got inside I phoned the police while the hopping thing did its best to come through the wall. Scared? I didn't know whether to shit or go blind so I just closed one eye and farted and hoped for better times. It took about an hour and a whole lot of black coffee before the thing left off thumping and squelching and went back to wherever it lives.

from Linger Awhile

p.a. morbid 2006

It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we don't fit. Some times it cant find the arm hoals and it tears us a part.

from Riddley Walker

I chose this quote because it always reminded me of the 'thing' that woke in me at times with a wish to vacate this earth as soon as possible and which I was either fighting against or going along with and it especially rang true as the morning I posted it - in a phone box in Netherfields, Middlesbrough - where I grew up - was just a week after I'd got out of hospital after taking an O.D. because, among other things, my drinking had got out of control and I'd just hit rock bottom and was too bruised to bang my head against the wall anymore.