Impulse

I wanted to say something but it's suddenly gone, like a sleek eel that slips my hand. I was listening to some bedtime music last night. Something occurred to me but my eyelids were heavy so I decided to let it go. Just now I was reading Ondaatje's 'Running in the family', three pages into it and I wanted to yell in pristine exhilaration. It was that kind of magic in words that could snap dead nerves back to fire. It again arouses a vague idea that the true significance of art, or any other form of expression holds its power in inspiring the unconscious and thereafter setting off a revolution of minds. I start to sound like I was one of the inspired and privileged holding the torch on the path of revolution. Inspired I am but a more precise description would be I was chaffed into inferiority at the same time that I was struck with awe. It's one of those many instances in your life where you gape at the distance and wonder how many heck of years it'll take before you grow from a dot to something abstractly visible. Or maybe you just wanna worship the god instead of overtaking the god.

Saw a short review on Charles Frazier's new book '13 moons'. Ding! I planned to use that title for the imaginary house setting but it was too religious to be understood. His language is far more factual and historical than vivid. Or maybe I should revise The Cold Moutain to say that.

An excerpt from 'Running in the family', from the first page.



Drought since December.
All across the city men roll carts with ice clothed in sawdust. Later on, during a fever, the drought still continuing, his nightmare is that thorn trees in the garden send their hard roots underground towards the house climbing through windows so they can drink sweat off his body, steal the last of the saliva off his tongue.

He snaps on the elctricity just before daybreak. For twenty five years he has not lived in this country, though up to the age of eleven he slept in rooms like this - with no curtains, just delicate bars across the windows so no one could break in. And the floors of red cement polished smooth, cool against bare feet.

Dawn through a garden. Clarity to leaves, fruit, the dark yellow of the King Coconut. This delicate light is allowed only a brief moment of the day. In ten minutes the garden will lie in a blaze of heat, frantic with noise and butterflies.

Half a page - and the morning is already ancient.