31.03.00 : living in coincidences

Fri. 31st March

my book would be Paul Auster's - The Invention Of Solitude - a slim book in two parts - quite, quite different from each other - I'd like now to quote a section in which he talks of coincidences but I can't since I'm on a train from Norwich to Cambridge I'll post it later, but for now other coincidences are emerging in my In The Place Of The Page mailbox .....
Brigid sent me a text plan containing the words - home a edit, a decision Patricia and Jane have both mentioned current engagement with making new living/working spaces well, just to register with you all that I'm there too and am moving towards a space with no doors,furnished window sills, no curtains and pipes that do not attempt to conceal themselves am aware that this dialogue already seems to have visited three rooms at the very least - wondering are there doors to these rooms? indeed to this dialogue? do you mind if I open them, remove them? refuse to close them?
in the "introductions room" I placed a caravan which is really bridge - well i'm still in that place but far nearer the other side than I was - moving towards that phrase in my text plan - home an edit, a decision and then Shane's description of the book "she's" living in arrived in my mail box it strangely echoes my own recent experiences of living in a book - or more accurately - books, an experience I share with cris (hope you don't mind me mentioning it here, cris, but it seems pertinent) - we're collaborating (maybe that should be in the introductions room) on various projects (we call them occurrences) all flowing in some way from things of our own and things given to us that in some way could be argued as not worth keeping
we've constructed for ourselves two spaces which we've recently joined into one, spaces in which we've imagined that we're being held hostage, we have a deadline - by May 2001 we have to crack the code of this space/s or ?............ the spaces are two ring bound hard cover books. One book contains 100 pages all numbered 99/100 taken from 100 books spanning a century of publishing 1897 - 1997 and all argued by us and others as not worth keeping - the other book contains 101 pages all numbered 101/102 from the same books plus one! these pages are the only remaining easily legible remnants of their host books which have all been shredded - only very recently cris and I have been weaving these shreds at the same time as bringing these book/spaces together and our making first shared attempt at the task of decoding/writing/reading them.
As you can perhaps imagine these spaces are bizarre, fascinating and disorientating - a mix of paper textures, formats, fonts, illustrations, genres make the journey through their double page spreads not dissimilar to walking across the flat plains of East Anglia where we both live - each turn of a page (each step) subtley expand and alters the terrain invariably much of the territory remains familiar in the frame around the page (especially if its small - like the Paris map pages or Ruskin on War) - each turning reveals only what it has concealed, concealingl what was revealed. And then occassionally there is the dramatic turning of the page from the Guiness Book of Records or The Bride's Book or Greenhouse Gardening when, like suddenly reaching the top of a hill or breaking out of a thick forest everything suddenly changes before you and familarity can only be found be turning around and revisting where you've already come from.
it's a fascinating process, I do feel as if I've been living in these books, they are old friends now that still have the potential to excite, offer gifts, inspire, confuse and surprise me, we've each made an individual walk through their pages - documented now as first and second readings - we're no nearer breaking the code - the spaces are now joined, the partition wall has been dismantled they can only be read together and by two people - our next walk will take place on 29th/30th April over 24hrs - we'll keep you posted if you're interested (sorry about the mixing of metaphors!)

here's the excerpt from Shane's mail which really echoed for me -
According to custom, the occupants (now her lifelong friends) give her gifts - words - which she uses to construct her own houses. These gifts become interwoven like materials for a nest - she relocates them, places their words in different sequences, thereby making her own original creation. No cheap reproductions here. But it is difficult to allow people into the conversation when it is so very intimate, almost in code.

is this simply a coincidence? finally, if the above has made you curious another 'thing' to furnish the introductions room http://www.thingsnotworthkeeping.com

am feeling excited and supported by what's happening here

more later

Kirsten Lavers

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