Short, experimental pieces.
Ode to Joy
GRAPHIC NARRATIVE
We need not fear the future. There are policies and procedures to take care of it.
, he said. We are persuaded by most fiction to believe
that narrative constructions are representations of
lived existence. The notion of linear progression,
indeed the very idea of history as some unfolding meta-narrative is a self-soothing device. Who we are is really a rapid procession of fragments imagined and remembered that flicker randomly through our minds. This event of the slice of toast falling onto the floor triggers in me a disproportionate rage. The smell of sticky, brown sugar brings 1967 to the present when grandmother is no longer dead but making me breakfast in her small kitchen where the back door opens onto a valley in the Makhonjwa mountains. In my daughter’s hand gesture I see my mother and later, walking down the passage at 3 a.m. I walk on tiles where thirty years of feet have trod and the floor is still warm from their passing. My fiction is a clumsy construction. But no clumsier than the life I live in the world where a carefully maintained routine keeps everything in place and presents the illusion of order. Perhaps the purpose of Art is not to entertain, but to remind us that we have constructed our lives the way we expect stories to be told: with a clear beginning, a middle followed by an end. There are times I yearn for such a life. But some prior disruption has inclined me to find solace in moving through the world with little regard for boundaries. This brief sojourn we have named “life” is a thing of beauty easily trapped. We ought to at least try to construct from our fragments something that we might call our own. Or not. Who knows? But there is some fun to be had in throwing ideas around. Thank you for taking the time to stop by.
Suburban Leaves 