21.03.00 : living in books

Tues. 21st March

o mi god until recently i have always lived in a book - first other peoples' and then my own from beginning to write my first novel in 1988 to november 99 when i resolved to stop writing fiction i have lived in my own books now i am broken from that now i am broken so tonight i choose to write about: what is it like NOT to live in a book? for me at this moment it means clean air; it means no processing; it means i am living in direct experience instead of every moment of my life being assessed for potential material; ditto every moment of everyone else's life; every moment of YOUR life. It means a reclaimed existence. It means my daily minutiae are no longer art, but just life. It means I am free to think without structure; to feel without poetry; to love without record.

Today I took a ferry across Sydney harbour - this is an incredibly knotted city - so many means of transportation, so many trains, buses, monorails, taxis, ferries..... as I sat at the bows and felt the wind in my face I demurred for a moment on whether or not to pull out my notebook and pen and record it fresh then and there. I decided against. I chose instead to laugh, to breathe, to lift up my face to the evening air and feel the spray on my face. for me, right now, living in a book is like being trapped inside someone else's mind, or inside my own. instead, today, I am breathing air. Just air.

Sue

Tues. 21st March

for me to live in a book is to identify oneself with the technology of his/her own era. one's mind operating like pages being flipped through by an invisible hand. thinking in terms of preface and postface, thinking in terms of chapters or maybe in terms of tomes. "oh, my life would be a nice book." thinking in terms of a sequel, of trilogies. thinking of each day like a page still not read. making all these note on the margins. organizing the chaos in terms of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. naming, marking, highlighting, making cue cards. considering the gutter as a kind of black hole where all the dust accumulate. I have tried onece in a while living outside of a book, escaping to a deserted beach, but than again I run the risk of becoming just a character in someone else's book.

Sergio