Show pigeons are walking existential crises, if you think about it

I am suffering a dry streak, my friends. Dry as all those rivers that were dammed to make dams because some committee wanted a dam and be damned the ecosystem. Dry as the absence of vowels in the word. I can't find anything good to read. And I don't mean 'good' as is literature, but I don't mean cult classic either. I have been abandoned by books I actually want to read.

In the not-too-distant past there has been The Passage and Night Film and Mara and Dann. But search back through these archives (maybe you will find something more interesting back there) and see that they are segregated by months. Years, maybe? Possibly. Probably. Perhaps - no, definitely - I am being melodramatic, but see, this is how I count my days, months and years. This is how I catalogue my memories.

A show pigeon

I don't think: "In February last year, I sat outside on a bench and watched a show pigeon trying to be a dove while I wrote." I think "A hardcover Kurt Vonnegut was on the table and I was listening to Ben Howard. It was windy, a cold wind, but I liked being outside." Before this, I had read Fahrenheit 451, which although I don't talk about it much is one of my favourites. It is a lonely book, as any book set in a policed dystopia must be. I had read it sitting on my bed between naps.

Some of my collection of must-I-finishes? includes A Widow for a Year by John Irving, The Luminaries by Elenor Catton and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Even before I finish the first sentence, I am on the tracks of my own stories, the book held in front of me like a disguise - rendered useless by the fact I am alone. Since I am being picky now, the author needs to go big or go home. I want a plot that knocks on my breastbone and yells that he will huff and puff if I don't give him my heart to chow on.

Metaphorically. Of course. Definitely. I mean, who doesn't love the bolschy character who is a bit of a bully but who also has a heart that tells him when to use it?

I had to think for a moment to remember what I am technically theoretically and painfully reading now. A Canticle for Leibowitz. One of the big bloopers in The Passage was that nothing had decayed much 100 years later. The ragtag team ate dented cans of peaches. Electricity grids still ran, albeit failingly. Did you know that the acid in modern paper actually makes it less durable? Books made of paper from the last century or so will crumble sooner.

Did you also know that in 1000 years, men in habits will be finding receipts and to-do lists hoarded in a time capsule where nothing else has survived time? And - oh this is my favourite - that all of human knowledge will disappear into warring factions of Neanderthals, in which women are once again just wet nurses. And that we will be forced to walk with a silly man in a brown habit who we cannot love even as a baby brother who likes to recite poetry he doesn't understand.

It would make sense if you read it. But don't. Let me finish and tell you at length how awful it is. My version will be a better read.

But this is not a dystopian novel and so there is light. A flickering solar light, maybe, or the slow beam of a long-dead star. I borrowed and started reading The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. Not a recommended read, unless you enjoy pirouetting on a pinhead that is an idea with far too many rust spots to be appealing.

You know (yes, you know) that in my roving mind, ideas are important. Critical in fact. Stories of what we might do when the ties of society are loosened are vital, because that is who are, isn't it? How else can we understand ourselves as moral beings? How else can I understand myself? (That is hypothetical, because I don't and I am not sure I believe people who say they do.) Right now, steam is exploding from my nose and ears like a cartoon bull, at the frustration of being and of knowing. These are the kinds of stories I tell myself when I am pretending to read.

Umberto Eco is a true polymath, like Noam Chomsky: he is an expert in so many specialised areas of study that to call him a generalist is also inaccurate. I am in awe and jealous of the man, who by my age had probably already written two books and disproved a host of flawed ideas. I am also embarrassed (as if he were standing in front of me) by how little I have achieved. 

To take another hammer to my street cred, I only read Name of the Rose after my literature degree. Just before this, I had read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

Aside, because now I know I must write a post on translations: Pamuk's writing is beautiful and made more beautiful by the strangeness (in the literal sense) of the culture, history and language. In this book, the culture is the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Marat III and a murder mystery than circles the scribes in his employ.  The novel binds itself around notions of representation and art. For example, is it art if it is mimicry? It posits that a piece of work is a form of immortality - but is it? What about those sculptures sitting in museums that we can't identify? Is that a legacy?

Name of the Rose touches on so many of the same themes, extending my experience of both novels so that they seem sort of magical (and you know I am not one to use these words lightly. Except when I am making fun. Which is often, but not now). The novel is set in a monastery in Italy, about 150 years before My Name is Red, there is also a murder mystery and the monks are also scribes. While the Ottoman scribes are also working in service of their faith, they enjoy beauty and their craft for craft's sake. Both sets of works are decadent, but the Italians are more repressed and conflicted. Probably not as repressed as the British.

In Eco's world, art does not exist for art's sake. In Pamuk's world, art for art's sake is still a form of worship. When I think of the latter, I think of rich reds and blues. When I think of the former, I think of cool golds and greens.

This venture off-the-beaten-track was not meant to be The Point, but is somehow still is The Point. (Despite what people tell you, haphazard meetings are usually more useful than laid-out plans.) The Island of the Day Before reminds me why I love to read. Why I am mostly Reader, some Writer and a fraction of other stuff that I lost years ago and am still looking for. (If you find it, keep it - I clearly don't need it.)

Books are my religion. I mean that in a quasi-blasphemy way. Most people believe in the things that they can see and touch, and that they exist, which leads to a comfortable belief that the world exists as a place with meaning. I however am an extra in The Matrix but I am very conscious of all the set pieces. Metaphorically. Where the set pieces form a dangerous a chain of existential corkscrews. Which means the 'I' that is me is usually very confused and a confused animal is an edgy one.

Books are the antidote. A novel is made-up - the story finds a way to exist in a candyland of wirly-girglies without having to touchdown. (That is just how confusing life feels to me.) It is made of words that never promise they are real but can be content in being this in-between thing. Ideas, too, are multi-coloured strands that can be strung out further, tied up and then untied. They make space and time in which to be examined, and don't hassle me to make a decision every time I put a key in my front door to unlock it.

If you are the kind of person who reads the conclusion first, this post is not about a single novel at all. But intention is nine-tenths of meaning, so know that I meant to and then got carried away. By which I mean I meant to do that, but you need not read it. I don't think this post was meant to be read; I just needed to write it.