water beneath sarrail falls, kananaskis, june 25/08
red willow branch, cascade on king creek, kananaskis, june 24/08
another king creek tributary cascade, kananaskis, june 24/08
A lovely friend sent me a book earlier this week -- Girl meets boy, by Ali Smith & I just finished devouring it during all my work-breaks & travelling today. Oh my goodness. Such a perfect book to be swept into -- a fantastical remix/retelling of Ovid's story of Iphis & Ianthe which melds gender fluidity and the politics of water. It's one of a series of myths reinterpreted by contemporary authors... Anyway, I was on the ever-treacherous St. Albert bus coming down Groat Road when I read the penultimate page, which flowed so gorgeously that I got little tears in my eyes & I didn't even care that I was on the bus with the snarky Mister Mulletman driving:
"Rings that widen on the surface of a loch above a thrown-in stone... Nothing more than what happens when things come together, when hydrogen, say, meets oxygen, or a story from then meets a story from now, or a stone meets water meets girl meets boy meets bird meets hand meets wing meets bone meets lights meets dark meets eye meets word meets world meets grain of sand meets thirst meets hunger meets need meets death meets life meets end meets beginning all over again, the story of nature itself, ever-inventive, making one thing out of another, and one thing into another, and nothing lasts, and nothing's lost, and nothing ever perishes, and things can always change, because things will always changes, and things will always be different, because things can always be different.
And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to".
-- Ali Smith in 'Girl meets boy', p. 160.
Such a sweet, joyful, subversive book, about the impossibility of controlling something that can't be controlled, whether water or identity, something too fluid to be contained. Anyway, I wish I could be more articulate about it now, but alas, still too fresh.
I loved the puns too. Oh my goodness, she is clever.
Anyway, so nice to read a story again, & this was just the perfect story for me at this very moment. Thank you, Miss Arwen.
I need more stories, stat! Saramago's 'Blindness' is next on the list...
3 comments:
mullet man! my god. what is it now, 15 years running? it makes my stomach flip (for good or bad i don't know) to realize that somewhere there's a place whose characters are part of a story i left, a story that i thought stopped when i left. does mullet man still stop for a coffee at westmount when he gets to ross shep?
i'm so glad you love the book. i love ali smith. i fell IN love with her with this book. she IS ovid, i swear, and more.
p.s. - this really is my favourite book of all time.
yes, he is still there, in fine form, hair's the same of course, still wearing his sunglasses (even at night), swearing at cars on groat road & snarking at people who touch his pile of newspapers behind his seat.:P
(didn't stop for a coffee that day, but i am sure he still does!)
the more i think of that book, it just gets lovelier & lovelier. i know what you mean about it opening you up. it's the sort of story that in reading it makes you love absolutely everything even a little more than before...
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