January 19th 2025
Reading, in the air, journeys, and writing, and a threaded in book review.
So, I’ve just got back into reading again. It’s an extraordinary thing: originally 4, to 5 to 6 to 7 weeks (hoorah!) our visit got extended—waiting for our work visas to go back to Bahrain—I’d put all things literary (full immersion, that is), on hold till our elongated Christmas and New Year’s visit to Cyprus came to a close.
Locking up our flat, I felt a leap – We’re on the road again!!—car jammed full with suitcases, rucksacks, cloth bags, paper bags, hand luggages—to Larnaca we go!!
Doesn’t matter where it is—it is the journey—that road ahead, the movement: action— the oily glide of the road, the weight of it all on the back tires (we had to stop and lift up the part grazing the back left one on my side), and those mountains. I’m sure we were all meant for it—this movement, to roam from place to place, there’s nothing like it for eliminating … an eraser on a slate—create your own life, afresh, turn the page of your story, feel the air oozing through the gap in your car window you must someday fix, put your legs up on the dashboard and breathe … in the words of my dad when he first opened his business in South East London, Dulwich, in my upcoming memoir 3, North Cross Road, or Sea With Salt Water, or both—Is there a better thing?
Oh, yes… reading. The thought of it, on this journey, the pack of the books in the bags I will read, but rather family members instead I devote my time, my love, I love them so, to…The books I take out, put aside, bedside, bag, smooth and cold, colourful, woody, the journey into them requires time: You have to get into them, O’Brien, writer, Edna, said, and – Literature is everything (she mentioned that too). And, why do we love what we love? Tell me, this?
Cyprus—journey to Larnaca, our last stop before leaving. My stomach fireflies remind me of work, work, the writing a coming. Birds spread their wings, then retreat, do they not? Changing climes; survival, it’s in their DNA, geographically engrained, navigating their paths—spanning thousands, sometimes, of miles. Dubai, Mumbai, Shanghai … now to Bahrain, the journey on which I continue to read (aptly) The Odyssey—an aqua covered morsel from ‘Public’, Paphos’s curiously, but often gem-finding electrical, come trinket perfect for present giving, stationer, book store—by Lara Williams. I like to read different things—Get out your comfort zone!—Well, of course, I told you—the cover: aqua water drizzled— her name and title in purple/pink and a promising little swan, shaped like a child’s dingy in the bottom right hand corner—Oh, will she survive?—this Ingrid heroine in the book I’ve so far read who’s been on a cruise ship for 5 years after a broken relationship (we like relationships!—See my book up there Our Foreign Borders!), attending to a gift shop. It’s certainly wacky, reminding me of American authors past, like Ottessa Moshfegh (Eileen novel)—the era of self-deprecation, and…victimhood (slightly??)—or, more positively—as in Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior—the oddness of it—unsettling?—no, more odd, really … let’s give characters super odd traits, like her boss, Kevin, on the ship, calling her in as she’s been chosen to be part of the secret society—whatever it will be (we’ll find out), pouring her and himself soy sauce Japanese tea in asymmetric pots, meditating, never gazing at her, but telling her to repeat a memory again and again: More detail this time, to find your true authentic self!! Yes (me now), Mateo Askaripour, on the back cover’s review section says: ‘I have never read anything like this … deliciously unpredictable.’ Mmh… the latter, yes, perhaps that is the point to get noticed as an author—rather than authenticity… Tell the story – just tell it!!— a dear writing colleague once critiqued another’s bestselling work, and I agree with them. The Odyssey does however (so far; I’m on page 38) deliver, in the words of another back page reviewer, ‘a modern’ (type of) ‘satire’ –I suppose, aided by short, clipped sentences and likewise italicized speech…but hey!!—we must, and should support other writers and the unsettling and quirky bits I do recall—they had an impact on me and this I champion. We’re all weird and quirky in our strange and quirky writerly ways. The thing is the story, or stories we tell—the bits we pick up like pecking birds from other fish and chip shop newspaper writerly works, consciously or not, they leave impressions, yes?— like tahini on our mouths’ roofs, sticky peanut butter. They’re there for a while, then melt to the CD collection of our brains, resurfacing, oh, yes—rotating as a bagful of clothing I have in the back of my car soon swirling (all colours) in a wash on the hill near the planes at one end of the Makenzie strip (airport), Larnaca, with a view of our newly rented 2-day flat: view of the sea, expansive as Santorini’s (you should go there), before leaving for Bahrain, the aqua book in my bag, going to be by my feet on the plane, which I’ll devour, in the air, and the queues, snatching time, watching life, returning to the book…nibbling a Cyprus carob sesame crunch bought from Larnaca’s ‘Finikouthes’ (Fig Tree Bay) kiosk, before flying, oh, yes, yes and … Is there a better thing??
More about journeys and writing and good books and reviewing and countries and people, life and observations and living in my next blog.
The books, in this blog, pictured above … Oh, don’t you just like mine…?? 😊Our Foreign Borders—stories on journeys, relationships in other lands – on Amazon, Kindle, Paperback, Hardback, now.
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