Midnight Prose Joachim Frank
(first appeared in Lost And Found Times, now defunct)
“His first sentence was quite pleasing”. (As he
was writing this, he was sliding down the side
of her bed, with his bottom hanging over, his
hands grasping the blanket as a squirrel, or
a cat that is trying to hold on to a piece of
the tablecloth. There was reggae music going
in the background, and she was giggling over a
paperback, or the sound of her giggling was still
fresh in his mind as he started to make hectic
rescue motions). There followed a brief section
that appeared to reiterate the main statements
of his first sentence, which seemed classical by
now, so often had they been recited in his mind.
“There was a sentence after this with unique
strength, not of this earth”, he heard himself
thinking. At this point, the author had caught up
with the reviewer in the reviewer’s mind. The
latter started to sense a strange beauty in the
author’s writing which he thought he would never
be able to master. He was reluctant to continue:
there would be more defeat in the making. He
wrote: “Never again does the text meet the
standards set up at the beginning. In fact, we
begin to realize that this text we have in front of
us has one single purpose only: to accompany a
moderately brilliant sentence that would have been
lost all by itself, by all conventions of modern
publishing.” As he was finishing his judgment, he
heard her say “can you get away from me any
further?” It was this moment that he could have
chosen to slide off her bed entirely, letting go of
the last grip on the linen, quilt and all. He preferred
to stay composed, and adjusted his dangling
position to his new state of mind.
[LOST AND FOUND TIMES #11]
¿Es una pareja que habla casi al mismo tiempo mientras se desperezan un diálogo complicado quizás porque están todavía medio dormidos y algo de ella depende todavía de él, o viceversa? Es prometedor ese dialogo casi simultáneo pues la escritura no lo permite.
(English translation) Is it a couple who speak almost at the same time while they have a complicated dialogue, perhaps because they are still half asleep and something of her still depends on him, or vice versa? This almost simultaneous dialogue is promising because the writing does not allow it.
Thanks for this observation! Your remark echoes some lines in my poem “Tanglewood”, look it up in “Published”.