BooksBarbecue
Back Loop
Chapters (33)
  1. Loop
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
  15. 14
  16. 15
  17. 16
  18. 17
  19. 18
  20. 19
  21. 20
  22. 21
  23. 22
  24. 23
  25. 24
  26. 25
  27. 26
  28. 27
  29. 28
  30. 29
  31. 30
  32. A note on the text
  33. Copyright

Kafka, come here: ‘There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can’t do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.’

I spoke to Antonio the other day. He has some new nicknames for a person we both think is awful. So funny. It put me in a good mood and I went out to buy something for dinner. On the way, I ran into Luis Felipe. We had tacos at a place by the park.

What would become of a person with no friends?

My neck hurts. If my notebook had a detachable page that I could use as a heat patch, it would be ideal.

Wait. I love this song. The neighbour has such good taste. It’s true, writing is more like unravelling than weaving. Unravelling involves having woven something already and there’s always so much to unravel. But I won’t take out the part about the neighbour. What great choices. I’m singing along.

The Odyssey has a happy ending. But I wonder what’s in store here, what’s in store here for the two of us. Come back, so everything can carry on happily. We’ll resume our domestic life. Since they stopped making the granola you used to like, we’ll see which one we like now.

I read, in an essay, that one of Flann O’Brien’s Irish Times columns described a strange service for the owners of unopened books: ‘For a given sum the books would be handled; passages would be underlined, the spines would be damaged or words would be written in the margins such as “Rubbish” or “Yes, but cf Homer, Od., iii, 151” or “I remember poor Joyce saying the very same thing to me”, or inscriptions would be added to the first page along the lines of “From your devoted friend and follower, K. Marx”.’

Marginal, useless work. In fact, I’m drawn to the very idea of uselessness because there’s something almost fictional about it. A piece of work, an object, the more ridiculously useless it seems, the more fascinating I find it. All those objects, all those services that serve no one seem to me like the triumph of fiction. How I’d like to offer the book-underlining service, write in the margins, add false dedications, drink coffee, and now and then leave marks on the covers with my mug.

The more useless something is, the more subversive.

Let me unravel that.

The more useless something is, the more independent it is from reality.