There are times, especially during periods of change, chasms of shift, when I need to delve into myself for a few days. When all I desire on a Friday night, is nothing more than solitude. It's cathartic. A cleansing of sorts – a time to reflect, to sort through the jumble of thoughts, emotions and to-do lists constantly floating around in my head. Solitude is healing, a time when I feel most at peace, at bliss, content.
I like beautiful music and beautiful prose. Jim Brickman – the pianist. Vanessa Mae – the violinist. Anne Michaels – the poet/novelist.
Anne Michaels.
She unstitches me. Fugitive Pieces, a book I first read in high school, still leaves me breathless, lifted, changed. I've read it a dozen times now, sometimes reading and re-reading a page over and over again, to hear the alliteration in my head, to sift through the layers of symbolism and metaphor. It is gorgeous prose.
I spent three hours last week sitting at the kitchen counter, piano music blaring, paging through the book, picking out my favourite lines. Below are a few of them:
Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.
Meeting Alex at the music library was like a gift of a beautiful bird on the windowsill. She was like freedom just over a border, an oasis in the sand. She was all legs and arms, gangly and elegant, all bits and pieces with one united appeal. The teenager peeped from her face or limbs just when she was trying to be most sophisticated. This unsettled innocence was like iron filings to a magnet; she was everywhere on my heart, spiky and charged, itchy and there to stay.
In Michaela's favourite restaurant, I lift my glass and cutlery spills onto the expensive tiled floor. The sound crashes high as the skylight. Looking at me, Michaela pushes her own silverware over the edge.
I fell in love amid the clattering of spoons…When you are alone – at sea, in the polar dark – an absence can keep you alive. The one you love maintains your mind. But when she's merely across the city, this is an absence that eats you at the bone.
Go read it. It will change you.
