just a reader.

May 12, 2005

He thought, as he watched her, that in all his life he had never seen a more seductive thing than the unconsidered gesture with which she folded back her sleeve. He saw the brown outer skin of her arm, as she turned her wrist, the surprising vulnerable white of the inward flesh and the veined curve inside the elbow. Her reaching hand and forearm, momentarily transfigured by water, had seemed in that instant to form part of the design — the design attributed to Pisano but probably even older. These simple actions moved him by their involuntary power, their immense accomplishment. He was amazed too by the magnitude of his own response, which gave her gesture real consequence. Although he had spoken to her earlier of his romantic temperament, he was as shaken by this pang of authentic sentiment as if he had encountered a friend totally unchanged after an absence of twenty years.

Shirley Hazzard, The Evening of the Holiday.

April 8, 2005

The mountains were full of marble quarries and there were shops selling alabaster. We used to sit in the square at a café where the waiter looked exactly like photographs of the young Kafka. Iris took a great interest in him. Unlike most Italian waiters, he moved with diffidence, as if uncertain of what he was carrying or where to put it. He seemed to like us, but his smile was distrait, a little tormented, as if he were planning some work he knew he would never finish. His head was always surrounded by wasps, which he made no attempt to brush away, as if they were visible embodiments of the angst within him. "Perhaps he will put us both in one of his stories," said Iris.

John Bayley, Elegy for Iris.

April 5, 2005

Polly knew you were meant to listen to music purely as music and not have it remind you of other things, but the melody—austere and rather mournful—made her think about herself, about her present sadness, her fear that her life would never be innocent again, and about Lincoln, who was an artist, too. As for the others in the Solo-Miller party, with the exception of Henry, Jr., who looked slightly moronic, and Henry Demarest, who was a plain, old-fashioned music-appreciator, the look of the higher mind was all over then. Beate seemed absolutely elevated. Music to them was philosophy, mathematics. They liked to be challenged by brain food of a very sublime order. And best of all was criticizing the performance at dinner. Wendy adored a bad performance, especially of anything written for the flute, an instrument she loathed. A bad flute player was all her joy: “So breathy and spitty,” she liked to say.

Laurie Colwin, Family Happiness.