remembering to breathe

[helenic]

I have tangled hair, bare feet and a messy head. Drank Holsten Fusion last night in the Globe (it was the only beer for less than £2) until I felt ill - there's a sourness at the back of my throat still that's reminiscent of blackcurrant, even though afterwards we sat in Ed's room drinking bud and eating celebrations (bounty & malteaserteasers for me, of course) enough to blot out any other taste. His Miles Davis poster fell off the wall and we couldn't get it to stick again, so he propped a CD on top of the stereo and changed it when we weren't looking, although I didn't realise this till afterwards and wasn't sure whether I was hallucinating or whether the picture had miraculously come to life. We were listening to Ani di Franco though, which I doubt Miles would have much approved of.

Iain and I cooked fried chicken with mushrooms and creme fraiche, although as usual these days I couldn't finish it. Ended up picking at the rice with my fingers while he read a short story I'd recommended (a rejected chapter from Hopscotch; Julio Cortázar), because cutlery makes food more intimidating, and smaller mouthfuls are always easier. At home I never stopped eating, but here somehow my appetite diminishes; I never eat breakfast, don't have time for lunch (or if I do it's just toast and peanut butter and tea, as usual) and by the time we get round to eating in the evening - after frantic rushes to finish work and cycling like a madwoman to the faculty in the rain to hand it in, and supervisions - it's invariably 7pm before we start to cook, and however hungry I am I can never manage more than a few bites.

He semi-dozed on my bed then and I read him Smith of Wootton Major, because he's never heard Tolkein's faery tales and they're his most beautiful work. Designed to be read aloud; I heard them from my father aged four, and I'll read them to my children, along with the Lays of Beleriand and Grimm and the Kalevala, just for sake of the rhythm, and the words.

The boy got up before dawn, for he did not wish to sleep: it was his tenth birthday. He looked out of the window, and the world seemed quiet and expectant. A little breeze, cool and fragrant, stirred the waking trees. Then the dawn came, and far away he heard the dawn-song of the birds beginning, growing as it came towards him, until it rushed over him, filling all the land round the house, and passed on like a wave of music into the West, as the sun rose above the rim of the world.

"It reminds me of Faery," he heard himself say; "but in Faery the people sing too." Then he began to sing, high and clear, in strange words that he seemed to know by heart; and in that moment the star fell out of his mouth and he caught it on his open hand. It was bright silver now, glistening in the sunlight; but it quivered and rose a little, as if it was about to fly away. Without thinking he clapped his hand to his head, and there the star stayed in the middle of his forehead, and he wore it for many years.

When you read aloud for a long time the words seem to start flowing through you of their own accord, as if you couldn't stop if you wanted to, and can only listen until the story ends. After a while the fairylights above my bed began to blur together, and seemed to spin slowly in the dark, like constellations.

Comments

[fingertiptouch.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of Tolkein's fairy tales before, but that extrat is beautiful.