ponderings

"Lionel Abrahams has written about the significance that certain stray conerners of the city assume through personal association. places where we feel more alive and more at home because a 'topsoil of memory' has been allowed to fomr there. Louise Masreliez is concerned with the 'private niches' memory creates in the public space of the city. the image aptly suggests the small and fugitive nature of the association (a 'niche' may be as fleeting as a mood or atmosphere). Both writers presesnt memory in intreguiingly concrete terms. whether as topsoil or niche, whether substance or receptacle, memory is endowed with a hand-warmingly physical quality. this most intimate faculty, resdiing in the heart of the mind, in the softest organs, might yet carve out or fill a space in the material world. so we allow parts of oursevles to take root and assume a seperate life. these marks, the places where our thoughts and feeling have brushed against the world, are not jsut for oursleves. we are like tramps, leaving secret signs for those who come after us, whom we expect to speak the same language. our faith in the music of this double address, in the echo chambers of the head and the street, helps to explain why apartheid deafened us to the call of home."
ivan vladislavik, portrait with keys.

ive been reading lots lately, as am house sitting the house of a friends parents, so hence the quotes featuring largely. also the book rocks and i want to share that around. things are goign well, if not steady and slowly, but going at least is the good part. pottering onward and upward.