Words Well Spoken

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Short Talks by Anne Carson

Short Talk On Orchids
We live by tunnelling for we are people buried alive. To me, the tunnels you make will seem strangely aimless, uprooted orchids. But the fragrance is undying. A Little Boy has run away from Amherst a few Days ago, writes Emily Dickenson in a letter of 1883, and when asked where he was going replied, Vermont or Asia.


Short Talk On The Sensation Of Aeroplane Takeoff

Well you know I wonder, it could be love running towards my life with its arms up yelling let's buy it what a bargain!

Short Talk On Hopes
Soon I hope to live in a totally rubber house. Think how quickly I will be able to get from room to room! One good bounce and you're there. I have a friend whose hands were melted off by a firebomb during the war. Now, once again, he will learn to pass the bread at the dinner table. Learning is life. I hope to invite him over this evening in fact. Learning is the same colour as life. He says things like that.


Short Talk On Housing

Here is one thing you can do if you have no house. Wear several hats - maybe three, four. In the event of rain or snow, remove the one(s) that get(s) wet. Secondly, to be a householder is a matter of rituals. Rituals function cheifly to differentiate horizontal from vertical. To begin the day in your house is to 'get up'. At night you will 'lie down'. When old Tio Pedro comes over for tea you will 'speak up', for these days his hearing is 'on the decline'. If his wife is with him you will be sure to have 'cleaned up' the kitchen and parlour so as not to 'fall' in her opinion. Watching the two of them, as they sit side by side on the couch smoking one cigarette, you feel your 'heart lift'. These patterns of up and down can be imitated, outside the house, in vertical and horizontal designs upon the clothing. The lines are not hard to make. Hats do not need to be decorated for they will 'pile up' on your head, in and of themselves, qua hats, if you have understood my original instruction.