RANDOM 7/11/05

Collective nouns, find myself absorbed by them (inc.):
A siege of herons
A murder of crows
A skulk of foxes
A parliament of owls

Houellebeq leads me to this thought/memory/snapshot: a strange thing to want to hide, unsuccessfully in fact, behind a book whilst evidently out in the open. In this case, age fourteen or thereabouts, beside the swimming pool of a three star hotel on the Amalfi coast in about 1981. Seeking some form of release and separation from parental tensions; the regular rows, those bouts of insults and harpy-like bickering, barbed and nasty, volatile and often violent. It frightened me, and in public embarrassed me as much as them I’m sure. I myself was put in my place regularly for being what I was: afraid, painfully shy, awkward. I was loved I’m sure, but I was thrashed on so many occasions I lived in fear. The confused, dysfunctional messages of the aspirant middle-class combined with the Catholic induced discipline and retribution of an Italian workaholic father. So I chose to hide whenever I could. At home it would be either in my room or else out in the country roaming alone and untouched on foot or on bike. But on the family holiday when one’s shelters were regularly withdrawn through collective activity, a book was the only resource left. A book was literally a physical barrier (or perhaps I tongue tie that by saying literally a literary barrier?). I chose the biggest book I could find for that holiday: a huge, thick edition of The Collected Novels of H.G. Wells. It must have been over two thousand pages, hardback with a bright turquoise and gold lettered flyleaf cover; when opened it hid my face entirely. It was an ideal portable escape with the added advantage of allowing my mind to go elsewhere too – adventure, sci-fi gizmos, far away islands, planets, monsters, and invasions. It was truly substantial in all respects: ideas, imagination, plus it weighed a ton. I soon learned to dream. I also learned that I could be a spy. After all I could appear to be reading, diving in behind those large pages with their fine print at the first sign of an argument, and therefore seemingly not present yet able to eavesdrop at will without giving any indication of attention. But it was a controversial decision; often my father couldn’t cope with the amount of time I spent reading and I was chastised as being strange and odd for doing so, for not participating. “In what?” I wanted to ask. All I could see was eggshells and insecurity and potential hazards on the road of marital disharmony. Over time the foil of course was that I developed a singular fixation on personal escapism, enjoyed and suffered at the same time, an unwanted necessity. After all I hoped to be found and told that everything was alright, there was nothing to be afraid of when the voices were raised and e.g. plates were smashed. The captivation became extraordinary to my mind; and it went beyond that first holiday, I brought it back undeclared to anyone but myself and it became a permanent feature of who I was and presumably am. It offered a different outcome to the inevitable one I had so far grown up with. What I hadn’t bargained on was that, given time, I was drawing attention to myself by this withdrawal. I became a focus through my denial of parental concern, and as I grew up that background wish to be found morphed into an equal fear of being discovered, assimilated into aspects of adult life. Fear of being found out, caught, and thereby judged. As if what one is doing is in some way incorrect, subversive, and damaging to the status quo of personal relationships. Even in the act of writing. But who now, now that I am supposedly a free-willed adult, would be doing the hunting?

To work: today, a room with a line of washed clothes drying out, stretched across it from two wooden beams; a single old armchair that has been in the same place for decades. Plus a convex mirror and slightly opened window beyond which winter is setting in bleak. That is all.

I am a thief, no two ways about that. A bastard and a magpie; with an eye to any bright phrase or notion that might come my way. Be careful. If it proves suitable to line the next entry my subtle ear will work overtime and grasp it for myself. Maybe it’s no bad thing if it does no damage, but where do you draw the line between ownership and theft; not of ideas but of their catalysts, their inceptors?