Subject: Re: assumption...
From: Valérie Aron (miss_vertigo18@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jun 18 2001 - 17:31:07 GMT
Dear Tim,
I love your post!!! Reading it gives me this same
feeling that I had last august ,when I saw the Grand
Central station Hall, after the hour spent in the
subway from JFK Airport to Manhattan. And I'm sure you
know what I mean.
Thanks.
Valérie
PS: I wish you all a very nice summer. I'm living for
vacation tomorrow (good morning Provence!!), but I'm
sure you will survive, just like Gloria Gaynor.
Bye
> I hope I'm not too ... treacly ... about this (no,
> that's perhaps the
> wrong word, but I am distinctly suffering a damaged
> vocabulary tonight;
> I absolutely refuse to use a thesaurus this evening,
> though, because
> it lends an air of deadness and staleness to the
> prose when I do that,
> and I would rather use an imprecise word than a word
> I have pulled out
> of someone else's glass display case), but I have in
> my heart a special
> fondness for those people who are not native English
> speakers, yet who
> are brave enough to come to this list and
> participate in an ENGLISH
> conversation about what is mostly American
> literature written in English;
> and who do so clearly, for the most part, and
> charmingly, and pleasantly,
> and in such a refreshing manner.
>
> Oh, and did I mention that the recent influx of
> conversationalists has
> breathed fresh air into what had been slowly turning
> into a slightly
> stale room, as the air becomes in a submarine that
> has been submerged
> just a BIT too long? So, thanks, too, for that. I
> am genuinely
> grateful to you who shuffle in with downcast eyes,
> making excuses for
> your English, when I couldn't make it
> one-tenth-of-one-percent of the
> way ahead in *your* languages, even if there were a
> gun barrel pressed
> to my head.
>
> And it does not matter when you say that, well,
> you're exposed to English
> because it is in many ways, for better or worse,
> becoming a common tongue
> of Europe and all that. I still think it's terrific
> that you do it and
> that you keep on doing it. I'm crazy about every
> last one of you having
> the nerve to do that. I'd never be able to
> reciprocate.
>
> Anyhow, this isn't meant to cast slurs upon the
> posts that have made it
> here in native English. I'm grateful for those too.
> It's why we gather
> around this crazy
> late-night-discussion-around-a-flickering-candle
> event
> (because for me, this bananafisherie always happens,
> in spirit, at night,
> at a time when we should all be asleep or, um,
> otherwise occupied). Even
> if I might occasionally answer a message when the
> sun is high in the sky,
> in my heart it is really 11 pm or so, and for that I
> am glad.
>
> I started in a terrifically pessimistic mood when I
> began to think about
> what to say in this note, thinking then only about
> digressions -- my
> negative mood having nothing to do with this list, I
> hasten to add -- but,
> after having been away from the keyboard for a
> couple of days, I came back
> and found a handful of messages, for which I am
> grateful, for which I am
> hungry, for which I am happy.
>
> As Valerie said, I love the digression. I hope it
> continues. I offer a
> virtual toast to the practice! May we digress until
> we turn that huge
> verbal circle and find our way back to where we
> started. And may you who
> come here as newcomers not feel unwelcome (for you
> are not), nor awkward
> (for you are among friends, even when some here
> growl), nor off-topic (for
> digression is the currency of this land we inhabit).
>
> I just finished rereading an old pile of letters
> Salinger wrote, mostly
> to a friend during the war (no, I fear that they are
> not available
> online, to those of you who might ask), and I am
> more aware than usual
> of the hesitant and stumbling way in which we start
> out in the world as
> writers and as readers, and it makes me feel good
> and generous and
> hearty. These letters, and a dip into CATCHER, in
> preparation for its
> 50th anniversary of publication in the U.S., make me
> feel very fine and
> revived, infinitely better and more generous than I
> was feeling when
> this evening began.
>
> And now it is over, and I should start to think
> about falling asleep.
> But there remains one last thing that must be said.
> Today was Father's
> Day in the U.S. Many people belittle it here as a
> "greeting card
> holiday," and perhaps it *is* that. But it need not
> be so, if we don't
> allow that to happen. Like some, or many, of you, I
> am no longer an
> active-duty son (my parents have died) nor a father
> (I made a conscious
> decision about that), nor do I daily see, as
> friends, any fathers.
>
> But I spent part of the day with my father-in-law --
> a gentle and lovely
> man who will never know how much I love and admire
> him -- and I closed the
> evening by chatting with the father of a dear
> friend, a father of the old
> mold, in his sixties, who recently underwent
> multiple-bypass heart surgery
> and who continues to bravely face the hurdles that
> remain in his way, and
> who sets an example of relentless survival for me
> that I cherish, though
> HE'LL probably never know it, either, and it's a bit
> past midnight now,
> and what a family I've assembled for myself tonight,
> in my very own
> digression, which is all I have to present here at
> my desk.
>
> I've got my stolen or borrowed fathers and sons
> (idea filched from
> Hemingway), and then there is a community of captive
> listeners -- that
> would be you, my fellow readers -- which consists at
> the moment of a
> list of email addresses stored in a file that is
> safely locked in the
> bowels of a computer somewhere in New York City in a
> metal cage, and I'm
> about to send this message that digresses in as many
> directions as a
> satellite. And all I know what to say in the end
> is, thank you to all of
> you for being out there to listen, to laugh, and,
> yes, to digress in your
> own replies, public and private.
>
> I'd like to think that somewhere out there, old
> Holden is smiling
> benevolently at this moment. Smiling, or wondering
> how to get off that
> crazy Broadway. You decide. I like to think he's
> found a warm place to
> curl up, which is exactly what I plan to do
> momentarily.
>
> Keep those digressions coming, you crazy fish!
>
> --tim
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Tue Jul 24 2001 - 09:20:44 GMT