SA4QE - The Slickman A4 Quotation Event
“My mind is subject to fits of strangeness; this morning coming to work I looked out of the bus window at people talking, crossing the road, running to catch the bus and I thought, all this is really only Death dressing himself up as people talking, crossing the road, running to catch the bus. Ought a doctor to see things in that way?”
Lines from ‘Come Dance With Me’ by Russell Hoban, writer, 1925-2011
That trains mostly stay on rails, that the streets are mostly peaceful, that the square continues green and quiet below my window is more than I have any right to expect, and it happens every day.
THE DUSK VS ME
How do you find? said the dusk.
Guilty, I said.
“In the storm a safe place, a calm and wild place. Oh the great secret. The forever-moment that has always been and will always be, the centre to which the universe configures itself. The magic place, the good blackness. The dancing of the heat on the infinite sands, the pyramids, the ziggurats, the lightning and the sphinxes of it, the pleasant palaces and rainbows. Now the satyrs are quiet and full-fed, now they sleep while the wild dogs howl. Broken is the great vessel of the alone, the aloneness is all spilt out. Broken the forty jars of silence wherein I crouched like forty dead thieves. Broken, broken, broken the solitary madness where the lizard-men ran silent on the ceiling of my mind. How they screamed and wept, how they dropped and one by one burst on the stone of Yes. The Yes of the death of the lizard-men.”
From Fremder (Novel, 1996) | Read more
"Perhaps this world that's in us, this world that we're in, was never meant to be fixed and permanent; perhaps it's only one of a continuous succession of world-ideas passing through the world-mind. And we are, all of us, the passing and impermanent perceivers of it."
Russell Hoban ~ From the Novel ‘Fremder'
From Fremder (Novel, 1996) | Read more
I woke up. There you are, I thought; life goes on.
The first time I saw her was in a dream, the colours were intense; the air was fall of vibrations; everything seemed magnified and slowed down.
The street lamps were lit but the sky was still light. She was waiting at a bus stop. A sign said BALSAMIC although there was nothing vinegary about the place, no friars and no Gilead in sight. There were nondescript buildings in warm colours, perhaps leaning a bit, perhaps painted on canvas. She was waiting for the bus; there were obscure figures queuing behind her.
[...]
There was the sign that said BALSAMIC; the letters were sharp and clear; they riffled like rail departures but the name stayed the same. There were those shaky-looking buildings and the bus stop and there she waited, the thin woman with the straw-coloured hair, blue eyes, and pale face, unknown but seeming to look at me round the edges of my memory. Sleeping or waking, I'd never seen her before.
Again and again she gestured with her clenched fist and said, 'Yes!' silently. She wanted me to follow her. Why? Here came the bus: FINSEY-OBAY, yellow, pink, and orange rice paper and bamboo lit from within like a Japanese lantern. Such a light against that not-yet-dark sky! Again she looked at me as she boarded the bus and I felt that thrill of terror as I stepped back. And again the sense of loss. What did she want? How could I find her again?
What is there to tell you? he said to an unknown audience in his mind. What’s the difference who I am or if I am? The audience shifted in their seats, yawned. All right, said Kleinzeit, let me put it this way: you read a book, and in the book there’s this man sitting in his room all alone. Right? The audience nodded. Right, said Kleinzeit. But he isn’t really alone, you see. The writer is there to tell about it, you’re there to read about it. He’s not alone the way I’m alone. You’re not alone when there’s somebody there to see it and tell about it. Me, I’m alone. What else is new? said the audience. Possibility of nothing this evening, clearing towards morning, said a weather report. Let me put it this way, said Kleinzeit. This will bring us down to fundamentals: I have a Gillette Techmatic razor. The blade is a continuous band of steel, and after every five shaves I wind it to the next number. Number one is the last, which is of course significant, yes? Then I stay on number one for ten, fifteen shaves maybe, before I get a new cartridge. I ask myself why. There you have it, eh? The audience had left, the empty seats yawned at him. Kleinzeit got out of the train, poured into the morning rush in the corridor. Among the feet he saw a sheet of yellow paper, A4 size, on the floor, unstepped-on. He picked it up. Clean on both sides. He put it in his attaché case. He rode up on the escalator, looking up the skirt of the girl nine steps above him. Bottom of the morning, he said to himself.
Hoban, Russell (2015-05-12). Kleinzeit (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (p. 8). Valancourt Books. Kindle Edition.
http://Russellhoban.org
The Slickman A4 Quotation Event ("SA4QE") began in 2002 as a fun way for Russell Hoban fans to share their favourite quotes with the world. Since then over 400 quotations have been posted in phone boxes, on park benches, on lion monuments, in bookshops and museums, as well as on social media.. Read more about SA4QE: ttp://russellhoban.org/sa4qe
From Kleinzeit (Novel, 1974) | Read more
