V/MMXXVI
It's a delight, a privilege, really, to accept the invitation a novel extends: a step into the unknown, but also an acceptance that resolution isn't promised. You appreciate that your perceptions will change, maybe with every turning page, because this boundless artform repudiates instantaneity.
Hey y'all,
Club YME drop, World Cup kickoff; it's a blessed day, so enjoy the themes and rhythms of May
YME's offerings thus far
January: I/MMXXVI
February: II/MMXXVI
March: III/MMXXVI
April: IV/MMXXVI
Lately, I've been spending my days with Roberto Bolaño. Hours and hours, sun up, sun down, heading east and west on buses jolted by Geary's potholes, venturing north and south on gas-guzzling flying machines. It's a delight, a privilege, really, to accept the invitation a novel extends: a step into the unknown, but also an acceptance that resolution isn't promised. You appreciate that your perceptions will change, maybe with every turning page, because this boundless artform repudiates instantaneity. It elongates every thread, forcing you to suspend your judgment and marvel at your capacity to escape into a world where your relationship with characters, place, and plot is yours alone. A deeply intimate isolation.
Still, I'm going to share some words that most definitely should not be for my eyes only.
By Night in Chile – Roberto Bolaño
I remember scrutinizing his face. I remember drinking his face down to the last drop trying to elucidate the character, the psychology of such an individual. And yet the only thing about him that has remained in my memory is his ugliness
Perhaps we were heading towards our souls, or the tormented souls of our forefathers, towards the endless plain spread before our sleepy or tearful eyes, our spent or humiliated eye, by all the good and bad things we and others had done. So it was hardly surprising that nobody cared about my introductory course on Marxism.
The Savage Detectives – Roberto Bolaño
What a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us
My father's relationship to his possessions, his house, his car, his art books, his bank account, was always distant and ambiguous, to say the least. It was as if my father were always unburdening himself, willingly or reluctantly, always getting rid of things, but with such bad luck (or so slowly) that he could never achieve the nakedness he longed for. And that, as you might imagine, ended up driving him crazy.
Oh how awful my face looked. The way it looks now, to give you some idea.
As we ate I asked him why he'd become a policeman. I don't know whether it was a serious question, it just occurred to me that I'd never asked him, and that if I waited any longer it might be too late. He answered that he didn't know. Wouldn't you have liked to be something else? I said. He said yes. What would you have liked to be? I said. A peasant, he said, and I laughed, but when he left I couldn't stop thinking about it and my good mood went away.
Of all the islands he'd visited, two stood out. The island of the past, he said, where the only time was past time and the inhabitants were bored and more or less happy, but where the weight of illusion was so great that the island sank a little deeper into the river every day. And the island of the future, where the only time was the future, and the inhabitants were planners and strivers, such strivers, said Ulises, that they were likely to end up devouring one another.
The visual arts are ultimately incomprehensible. Or they’re so comprehensible that nobody, first and foremost myself, will accept the most obvious reading of them.
I try not to rush the passage from comedy to tragedy. Life does a fine job on its own.
How many years had it been since we’d seen each other? Many years, so many that it was better not to count, not to remember, although I remembered them all, each and every one.
For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and relentlessly and are devoured by time and speed. Finally the Work journeys irremediably alone in the Great Vastness. And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end: the Sun and the Earth and the Solar System and the Galaxy and the farthest reaches of man's memory. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy.
I found some time to step out of Bolaño's worlds and dedicate myself to Tayari Jones' conceptions of black friendship, sisterhood, and romance in the mid-twentieth century American South.
Kin – Tayari Jones
The final three fragments should get you in the right mood for this month's playlist.
"There are rumblings about them putting up a barricade to keep anybody else from moving in," she explained, slicing vegetables for our lunch. "Like a little piece of wall can stop the march of justice." She popped a juicy wheel of cucumber into her mouth. "The day we arrived, you should have seen us. My sons were unimpeachable, I tell you. You could cut yourself, they were so sharp! As the movers unloaded our furniture, those white folks almost passed out. When my Chippendale couch came off that van, they knew that a new day had dawned." She laughed so hard, she nearly choked. "I don't know why I like that part so much. My husband says I'm obnoxious, but he loves it."
I hope she was in love, that she got to feel the thrill of desire and spirit aligning.
"Do you want to be my woman?" he asked me. "What do I have to do?" I touched his collarbones. "Besides this?" "You don't even have to do that," he said. "That's two separate questions." He twined his leg through mine, leaving me exposed, despite my clean gown. He kissed my neck and undid a few small buttons, brushing his lips over the skin revealed. "All I need is for you to love me. And however you love me, I will love you back twice as hard." "I want it," I said. "The love. Everything." "I’ll give it," he said.
We come to love people in many ways. Much is made of the burning love that hits like a smoldering remnant of a star hurled down to earth. Yet this is not the only type of love any more than the camellia is the only flower. There is the love that blooms from decency, and from that love, passion. On that cold day, I wanted to feel the marvel that was Franklin. I wanted to see his entire body, including the leg that he dragged on his left side. I wanted to feel the man that the devil tried to snatch. "I love you," I said. He startled, and I likely did the same. My lips and tongue formed the words without my permission. Franklin laughed with a joy and pleasure you will only hear once or twice in this life. It marks the arrival of good news that has no downside, at least none that you can see. "That's supposed to be my line," he said. "I never do anything right," I said. "You are doing this just perfect."
The Main Event
dance...
… with no inhibitions
Listening Note
Take the hand of the one you love and do whatever it is that lovers do.
Enjoy!
