009 - Mist Gets in the Eyes
This morning is mellow.
Steam rises from an aluminium contraption in my kitchen. Mother is making breakfast. Steamed rice cakes midweek is a surprise. The lid on the apparatus rattles, sharing the sentiment, mildly. Steam and flavour all hang in the kitchen heavy, clouds hang outside hesitant. What does the day bode?
Everything awaits on a precipice. White mist and grey clouds gather. What waits below?
I write sitting in front of the large windows of my hall. Late afternoon clouds have burst. Great big clouds follow them to bring an early sunset, so to speak. I write a story; it flowed well in the morning, but now I can’t find the words it needs. I look up at the window. Clear glass has given way to foggy opaqueness. Day has turned darker. Early and distant lights of cars below come and go on the damp window. Peeking toms, what do they look for? They are but fleeting and of no help as I grapple blind, searching for my words.
I have stared at the misty darkness outside all evening. Night fell some while back, but I don’t see it till late.
I have a new book to read. An illustrated edition of The Books of Earthsea. It is a book of books. The first one in the series is the Wizard of Earthsea. The first chapter in the first book is called Warriors in the Mist.
Today, somewhere in between, when the sun shined briefly, I read an interview of Steven Erikson. I found it last week, I chose to read it today, having forgotten why I wanted to. I have never read Steven Erikson. The piece answered my question as I neared its end - his experience of graduating from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop:
When I was there, everybody wanted to be Raymond Carver, but none of them had the life experience of Raymond Carver. You had this superficial glibness of language, but no subtext at all. I write to subtext. That’s where everything bubbles up from. The emphasis at the time was on clarity of language and that Carveresque minimalist style, but I was playing around with mythological undercurrents. By and large, I did not get that much out of Iowa in terms of learning the craft of writing. A lot of what I saw was stuff I did not want to do.*
At night, as I wind down a half productive day, perhaps having remembered it because I read of him, I pick up my copy of a collection of Carver. There are 80 poems in it. I linger over the contents and pick one and the first stanza goes like this -
Balzac by Raymond Carver
I think of Balzac in his nightcap after
thirty hours at his writing desk,
mist rising from his face,
the gown clinging
to his hairy thighs as
he scratches himself, lingers
at the open window.
It is later now, in the night. The rain has subdued. The street carries the silence and lights that only a day of dark rain brings. I sit by the window again. The rain has washed it clean. Or the maybe the mist lifted itself out from it. I may write.
This is from a trek I did last year, en route the summit to Deo Tibba. That’s our camp for the first night there, the bunch of tents. Soon after I took this photo we were engulfed with clouds and fog. Thought of it as I wrote this today. Would you like to take a walk along these mountains here next?
Epilogue
Balzac appeared in the collection called Fires by Raymond Carver. I recommend it especially if you like the craft of writing. The best bits of work in it, that includes essays and short stories besides poems, harks to other writers and the general craft. Here’s a review that brings its nuance out brilliantly.
On the matter of nuance - how good is Le Guin’s writing! I mean of course! But I had never read her work before I started reading the Earthsea series, and I’m spellbound by how she evokes an image in your head.
Staying in the realm of fantasy series, Steven Erikson’s Mazalan Book of the Fallen, a decade long twelve book series is right up there with the best. Here’s a review that makes me want to read it.
*I’ve edited a line or two from this for brevity. Carver wouldn't be too proud of my effort but.
I was looking for some place online where you could read the whole of Balzac. Instead I ended on a review of Richard Ford’s new short story collection Sorry for Your Trouble. Which is my feelings currently with regards to this letter. Anyway, here’s Balzac by Raymond Carver.
…Outside, on the boulevards,
Plump white hands of the creditors
stroke moustaches and cravats,
young ladies dream of Chateaubriand
and promenade with young men, while
empty carriages rattle by, smelling
of axle grease and leather.
Like a huge draught horse, Balzac
yawns, snorts, lumbers
to the watercloset
and flinging open his gown,
trains a great stream of piss into the
early nineteenth century
chamberpot. The lace curtain catches
the breeze. Wait! One last scene
before sleep. His brain sizzles as
he goes back to his desk - the pen,
the pot of ink, the strewn pages.