Stranded captain

his eyes far away
missing the great rolling waves
under his sea legs


Not the usual attire around here, considering we're in one of the places in Brittany that are the farthest from the sea on all sides. We can also say we're as close to the sea on all sides as possible. :-)

My reading list has quite expanded these past few weeks. It now includes:

The housekeeper - Melanie Wallace
The lovely bones - Alice Sebold
Poser nue - Nancy Huston
Specimen days - Michael Cunningham 
Au rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas - Simenon
Maigret à New York - Simenon
Trawler - Redmond O'Hanlon (just started)

The Cunningham and the Wallace books I liked best, for different reasons. In the Wallace it's mostly the style that got me: at times, I could have thought I was reading a novel by William Faulkner. Long sentences, repetitions to reinforce the sentences... The atmosphere is great and quite fitting to our current secluded environment, so my literary adventurous side (trappers etc.) was satisfied. I was just a tad disappointed at the way the novel ends, but it is a plausible ending to the story.

As for Specimen Days, I loved the fact that the main characters in the three parts share names. I was reminded of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy and also of a French novel, Julien Green's Varouna, in which a silver chain serves as the link between three characters throughout time (Middle Ages, Renaissance, First World War). In Cunningham's novel the link is double: the city of New York (even if it only serves as a starting point to the last story) and Walt Whitman's poetry.

I have long been an admirer of Whitman's verse. I discovered him in my teenage years and it had quite a powerful effect with what (being full of hormones) I felt as being an all-encompassing sexual undertone. Of course there is much more than that, Whitman is a writer of freedom, of nature. But even nature is sensual, sexual in his words.

The story of the writing and numerous rewritings and republishings of Leaves of Grass is also a source of wonder to me: being so dedicated to one's work is something to be in awe of, I think. The very illustration of Nicolas Boileau's line: "Cent fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage" ("put your work back on the loom a hundred times"). I shall therefore buy Library of America's edition of Whitman's complete poetry and prose.

I'm really happy of how I manage to read again, and at such a rhythm, putting me back in my old "reading tracks" so to speak. I used to read between 40 and 60 books a year until a few years ago, and I'm glad to see that I'm getting some of the old rhythm back. Of course, some of the time I used to devote to reading has now been taken over by photography (between the actual photo shooting, the editing and the time I spend here...), so it's not been totally absorbed in a black hole of time.

No water in the house for most of the day; it only came back on during the evening. We had to postpone our outing to La Gacilly's Photo Festival, which we've visited without fault these past four of five years. We're still around for ten days, we'll go. Today (Friday), therefore, will be a day of household duties (which I've started in earnest on Wednesday already!) and probably going to the restaurant tonight. Whether it will be by the lake or back at Gü's again is a matter of what we feel like eating by then. :-)

And finally, a bit of Walt for you:

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travell’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient – a little space – know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love