Pieces of Practice: Sticks, Seeds and Shells

In the Country of Last Things

"It is an odd thing, I believe, to be constantly looking down at the ground, always searching for broken and discarded things. After a while, it must surely affect the brain. For nothing is really itself anymore. There are pieces of this and pieces of that, but none of it fits together. And yet, very strangely, at the limit of all this chaos, everything begins to fuse again...As an object hunter you must rescue things before they reach a state of absolute decay. You can never expect to find something whole-for that is an accident, a mistake on the part of the person that lost it-but neither can you spend your time looking for what is totally used up. You hover somewhere in between, on the lookout for things that still retain a semblance of their original shape-even if their usefulness is gone."

Paul Auster 'In the Country of Last Things' Faber and Faber, London 1989, p.35-36

'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat'

"The presence of others, other people, excite and rattle him, force him into an endless, frenzied, social chatter, a veritable delirium of identity making and seeking; the presence of plants, a quiet garden, the non-human order, making no social or human demands on upon him, allow this identity-delirium to relax, to subside; and by their quiet, non-human self sufficiency and completeness allow him a rare quietness and self-sufficiency of his own, by offering (beneath, or beyond, all merely human identities and relations) a deep wordless communication with Nature itelf, and with this the restored sense of being in the world, being real."

Oliver Sacks 'The Man Who Mistook his wife for a Hat' Pan Books, London 1986, p.110

'How I classify'

"The sheer number of the things needing to be arranged and the near-impossibility of distributing them according to any truly satisfactory criteria mean that I never finally manage it, that the arrangements I end up with are temporary and vague, and hardly any more effective than the original anarchy. The outcome of all this leads to truly strange categories. A folder of miscellaneous papers, for example, on which is written 'To be Classified'..."

Georges Perec 'Species of Spaces and Other Pieces' Penguin Books, London 1999, p. 196

'Futile Gestures: Photo Albums and the Ecology of Memory' Faith Moonsang

'The Garden of Time'

"The flowers grew to a height of about six feet, their slender stems, like rods of glass, bearing a dozen leaves, the once transparent fronds frosted by the fossilized veins. At the peak of each stem was the time flower, the size of a goblet, the opaque outer petals enclosing the crystal heart. Their diamond brilliance contained a thousand faces, the crystal seeming to drain the air of its light and motion."

J. G. Ballard 'The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1' The Garden of Time Harper Collins, London 2006, p. 406

'Window'

"Window." There is a poetic image to be found in the origin of the word "window". It derives from two Scandinavian terms, vindr and auga, meaning "winds eye". Early Norse carpenters built houses as simply as possible. Since doors had to be closed throughout the long winters, ventilation for smoke and stale air was provided by a hole, or "eye", in the roof. Because the wind frequently whistled through it, the air hole was called the "wind's eye". British builders borrowed the Norse term and modified it to "window". And in time, the aperture that was designed to let in air was glassed up to keep it out."

Charles Panati 'Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things' Harper & Row, New York 1987, p.158

'Parable of the Palace'

"What we do know - however incredible it may be - is that within the poem lay the entire enormous palace, whole and to the least detail, with every venerable porcelain it contained and every scene on every porcelain, all the lights and shadows of its twilights, and every forlorn or happy moment of the glorious dynasties of mortals, gods, and dragons that had lived within it through all its endless past. Everyone fell silent; then the emperor spoke. "You have stolen my palace!" he cried, and the executioner's iron scythe mowed down the poet's life.

Others tell the story differently. The world cannot contain two things that are identical; no sooner had the poet uttered his poem than the palace disappeared, as though in a puff of smoke, wiped from the face of the earth by a final syllable."

Jorge Luis Borges 'Collected Fictions' Parable of the Palace Penguin Books, London 1998, p. 318

Sticks, Seeds and Shells

Kathryn Ryan

Fish Pond

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In the Country of Last Things

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