22.03.00 : living in books/thresholds

Wed. 22nd March

Well I got the 'living in a book' question in the middle of another day at the office, and took it first as a signal of the sort of email service we might soon be able to subscribe to - a little electric intrusion to smarten up the balance, based on online access to what the user is doing at the time: enjoying the pleasures of waving not writing, or else of secreting, or of adjusting a vase on the cill or else, as was the case with me, of writing a letter apologising for not being able to answer a letter - not just yet. Dear me! So you'd be paying for 'what's it like living in a book?' and similar interruptions to bring you to your senses from time to time. But I suppose Brigid meant the question literally, did she? Imagine a book as a habitable space. Where wd the floor be, where the ceiling, in terms of leaves and paragraphs and sentences and narrative time? I thought that was probably the question. Beyond that (not having the slightest idea) I thought I would mention that we talk a lot about thresholds here too. But for us a threshold is a device that permits judgements about harm and interventions into domestic life by welfare services. For want of a better adjective, we speak of 'pure' thresholds, referring to the possibility of making an objective clinical assessment about when it is right to throw down the door, and of 'process' thresholds, based on criteria to do with available resources - money for some remedy or other. - Probably not much here worth knowing, except perhaps as a reminder about other architectures. (Brigid's might care to offer her subscribers a selection of pure or process jolts)

Kevin