-
A weekend unblogg’d
“Another lapse in this book, I must confess; but if I do it against my humour I shall begin to loathe it; so the one chance of life it has is to submit to lapses uncomplainingly.” – Virginia Woolf, diaries, 23 October 1917 Friday two students called me back to work after I’d gone home,…
-
X-Persons
Went and saw X-Men III tonight. Enjoyed the gay metaphor at the beginning – rather touching really, especially with the lonely teenagers – and some of the setup was impressive; the ending was rather flat of course (why, in an age where fantasy and science fiction films are so amazing looking – finally; I love…
-
Spacious
Detachment, coolness, space: long sunny days. There’s a lot of work – this is the week when we spend hours deciding and negotiating final marks, sitting in judgment over undergraduate and postgraduate – and there is plenty of administration waiting, not to mention research, demanding attention at every corner. But I am somehow calmer than…
-
Stimulus / Response
[Los Angeles, 1991] You are still in your bathrobe. You’ve been tired, irritable all morning, avoiding thinking or thinking about thinking, wandering around staring at the undone dishes in the sink, the hairs in the bathtub. Wishing it would all go away, picking up a sponge and putting it down again, trying to force yourself…
-
Airports
(Rilke’s Last Flight) We walk inside huge jewels, ropes of white tourmalines, square-faceted; we straggle, silent, lonely, lost – The varied forms of faces thaw from fears or sudden loves, melt with unwelcome passions, freeze again; Then, waiting in black fields of chairs, we dream of those we nearly knew: we breathe the sun, we…
-
Controlled spaces
I have always (at least since I was very young, and sharing a room with my rather controlling, sometimes combative older brother) been meticulous about my home. Given the vast number of books this involves, and the huge number of moves between 1992 and 2002 (about fourteen, if I have counted right – some of…
Subscribe
Enter your email below to receive updates.
Paul Attinello 