Dedication

My occasional flatmate C, a lady-friend from HK, [settle down troops, nothing going on] keeps a cartoon journal. Everyday she draws hilarious little doodles in a notepad given to her by her daughter for Christmas. Nothing much, just fifteen minutes of cute cartoons inpired by her day. A funny pic of C with an appropriate emoticon face, a talk bubble with an explanation or an exclamation, and the day has been analysed, sorted.

Nothing necessarily big. Just something, every day.

Neato.

She has not missed a day since the beginning of the year.

Wish I had that dedication.

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And as my attempts to play that $180million app Draw Something have shown, I can't draw cartoons either.

Doomed.

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No examples of either, sorry.

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In other news, my favorite opening few lines of a novel have changed. No longer are these classic vying for top spot: "It was a starkers night in the dorm;" "riverrun, past Eve and Adams from swerve of shore to bend of bay brings us by a commodius vicus of circumnavigation back to Howth Castle and environs" (or something like that); "Listen. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time;" "One morning Grigor Samsor woke from a night of restless dreams to find he been transformed into a giant cockroach;" etc...

All are usurped by Robert Walser's opening two sentences of his 1925 novel, The Robber.


"Edith loves him. More on this later."


How awesomely fuck-you-literary-conventions-creative-writing-101 is that?

According to the blurb, Walser wrote this in almost indecipherable microscript. A first draft presumably; but Walser never bothered to transcribe it into a fair copy because he did not plan on publishing it. It was not "deciphered" and published in German until 1972 and finally translated to English in 2000 (review linked above).

Neato.

He was confined in a mental institution for the last 30 years or so of his life, at first of his own volition, as they say (which he says a lot), but latterly by Doctor's orders - although perhaps undeservedly. He went for a walk, and wrote something, every day. One day, on his walk, he fell dead in the snow. He didn't write much that day I guess.

You might recall that I had this beautiful Walser quote on my old blog: "We don't need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much."

E@L

(I have blogged about him once before (back when I was funny) when I was in Zurich on the way to a ski holiday.)