I've been, unfortunately, finding less and less time to read for leisure lately, but when I do find time, I cherish it... right now I'm halfway through Little Caesar, it was a random pick-up when I first arrived in london, I don't really know why I bought it, something about the book cover intrigued me, and it seemed the tone was poetic. It was also shortlisted for the IMPAC award (for novels translated into english). I started reading it quite a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised at how much I'm drawn into it. I think I tried to read it when I first got it, but the long descriptions of the sea and cliffs weren't going in. I am appreciating it a lot more the second time around.
This feeling of displacement/finding a home/temporary homes is conveniently encompassed in a recent dream I had. my little sister (who is about 10) and I were on the go, we sort of snuck into our old house I'm assuming, which was not a bad house at all, it was one of those expensive places with artificial lights that oozes fake warmth, (again the idea of having an amazing home but an unstable family is terrible, and the contrast in that regard is a trope you see in a lot of asian tv dramas, because it is probably so common, but anyway) but it seemed like a different version, I didn't recognise it really, as if it was time capsuled for our particular arrival in that specific moment in time, like they were waiting for us to rummage through to find absolutely nothing at all but the remnants of memories that may or may not have been made there. like a set up of what was and has been, like it'd be destroyed as soon as we step out, and the sudden responsibility of someone younger than me instead of older, took over me and I must not die, must not die before we reach a safe place. (this type of feeling kind of reminds me of the popular video game franchise the last of us where the protagonist is suddenly hit with the responsibility of the safety of a young girl in a post-apocalyptic world, that distance of practically being strangers is something I feel to some degree, I feel like children grow up so fast, especially when you're not with them all the time, like I've been in university and how perhaps I've been more distant as I grew up from the phase of being excited to have a new sister.. there might be some useful imagery in the gameplay here...) The atmosphere in the dream did feel like some dystopian movie, like danger could hit us from any angle. The time of day was uncertain, the rooms were dimly lit but the curtains could be closed against the outside. it was a dark purple or blue hue with spotlights on certain items, that light was warm, but too warm, not a pleasant warm, like the fake artificial warmth I mentioned before. you see a lot of that kind of lighting in expensive properties in taiwan. the angle at which I experienced this dream was sort of, with the spotlighted items, rummaged through, in the foreground, I'm not sure from which height, kind of seemed like I was a camera set up on a table to take in this scene, but two figures, one my height and one my sister's height, moving around in the room, the tension of time running out for finding something useful or a safe place chasing them. I understood as the dreamer that I was that girl and that was my sister. and in this sense it was a lot like a video game, I am able to sometimes see my character but also understand that I am 'playing' from this perspective. the relationship between the controlled creation of the video game world and the subconscious (live?) creation of the dream world is quite interesting... and there is something about the digital space that feeds into the abstractness of it all...?
The novel starts off with the protagonist going back to this sea-side town, for a funeral. Immediately you are faced with a strange loss, the man who died is not his real father but someone who was closest to that. You are confronted with this weird distance to the people around him, the place itself, and we dive into his memories of the place, and in the way it was written, we transition between the present and the past, and it is like piecing a puzzle together with living a logical progression of events in each timeline, as if we are simultaneously living in the past and present. Seeing how embedded the past is in his present, it makes sense.
At this point of the novel the inevitable finally happens, their house on the cliff gets eroded away in the storm. He, as a child/teenager, had lived with his mother, who seemed to always be living in a daydream, and always had faith that something will come along. She'd put him into the care of friends and family while she travels to other countries with a vague promise of finding a new home. they finally found this cheap house by the cliff (as it was in danger of collapsing against storms etc.) and now it had fallen. It felt quite symbolic... I can't quite put it in words right now, I'll drop down a few passages here:
p.101 Once he had left, I asked, rather casually, 'So what's the news?'
'Oh,' she said, 'Warren thinks...the forecasts are bad. He's afraid, I mean, he thinks this might be the end.'
But still. The weight. The irreversible. It hasn't made itself known, it was simply waiting for you all that time in the dark.
'What are you thinking, love?'
I blinked back tears and said from the doorway, 'I'm going to pack my things.'
What a house means. The walls around a cavity. It means inside, it protects you against the outside. Now inside was about to become outside. The roof would be ripped open, the dark sky would force its way in, the cold, black sea. I looked around my room, pondering over what should be taken and what not. There was no plan, no destination; the best thing was to pack as lightly as possible.
p.102 A quiet knock on the door, my mother. Her arms folded across her chest, she leaned against the doorpost. I asked what she wanted.
'There's a truck coming the day after tomorrow,' she said.
I looked around, the posters on the walls, the computer, the metal bed, the cupboard that listed to the right because it was not screwed together well.
'That's what I want to keep,' I said, pointing to the things on the bed.
The howling of the wind, only the beginning. 'It's just a forecast,' she said.
'Dream on.'
'We do have to be prepared,' she admitted, 'you're right.'
We talked about the end, my mother and I. It was our best conversation in a long while. We were not melancholy or dramatic, those were moods that had gone before; in the cold light of the fait accompli, the evacuation and the loss seemed easier to bear.
'And afterwards?' I asked.
'When this is gone, you mean?'
She nodded at the window, outside which the chasm had approached to within a single bound.
'There has to be something then,' I said.
'I have faith that something will come along.'
Faith was her secret charm, the abracadabra of holistic magic. For a moment there was the wrenching feeling of irritation, but I let it pass. She said, 'I can always get work cleaning houses, or...' 'Or at a roadside garage, then we'll be white trash and we can live in a mobile home along the highway! And we'll drive around in a van full of junk and neglect our teeth, okay?'
She laughed. The tinkling sound of ice cubes in a glass.
'So, the day after tomorrow.'
She nodded and said, still in the doorway, 'We have to be strong, okay, sweetheart?'
'Strong...'
'You already are, you always have been. I don't know anyone else like you, Ludwig. In fact, you don't really need anyone anymore.'
Gently, I pushed the door closed behind her.
There are some phrases in these parts that I really like and could be made into titles etc...the day after tomorrow/the tinkling sound of ice cubes in a glass/the inside of a house becoming the outside/this might be the end/in fact, you don't really need anyone anymore.
Below is the last page of the chapter where Ludwig describes him watching their house getting swallowed by the storm.
'I danced like a demon..' reminds me of something I wrote about the pain in my mother as the devil danced along the spine, then down her arm, 10 years ago. funny how we always associate the worst thing as demons or the devil.
This feeling of displacement/finding a home/temporary homes is conveniently encompassed in a recent dream I had. my little sister (who is about 10) and I were on the go, we sort of snuck into our old house I'm assuming, which was not a bad house at all, it was one of those expensive places with artificial lights that oozes fake warmth, (again the idea of having an amazing home but an unstable family is terrible, and the contrast in that regard is a trope you see in a lot of asian tv dramas, because it is probably so common, but anyway) but it seemed like a different version, I didn't recognise it really, as if it was time capsuled for our particular arrival in that specific moment in time, like they were waiting for us to rummage through to find absolutely nothing at all but the remnants of memories that may or may not have been made there. like a set up of what was and has been, like it'd be destroyed as soon as we step out, and the sudden responsibility of someone younger than me instead of older, took over me and I must not die, must not die before we reach a safe place. (this type of feeling kind of reminds me of the popular video game franchise the last of us where the protagonist is suddenly hit with the responsibility of the safety of a young girl in a post-apocalyptic world, that distance of practically being strangers is something I feel to some degree, I feel like children grow up so fast, especially when you're not with them all the time, like I've been in university and how perhaps I've been more distant as I grew up from the phase of being excited to have a new sister.. there might be some useful imagery in the gameplay here...) The atmosphere in the dream did feel like some dystopian movie, like danger could hit us from any angle. The time of day was uncertain, the rooms were dimly lit but the curtains could be closed against the outside. it was a dark purple or blue hue with spotlights on certain items, that light was warm, but too warm, not a pleasant warm, like the fake artificial warmth I mentioned before. you see a lot of that kind of lighting in expensive properties in taiwan. the angle at which I experienced this dream was sort of, with the spotlighted items, rummaged through, in the foreground, I'm not sure from which height, kind of seemed like I was a camera set up on a table to take in this scene, but two figures, one my height and one my sister's height, moving around in the room, the tension of time running out for finding something useful or a safe place chasing them. I understood as the dreamer that I was that girl and that was my sister. and in this sense it was a lot like a video game, I am able to sometimes see my character but also understand that I am 'playing' from this perspective. the relationship between the controlled creation of the video game world and the subconscious (live?) creation of the dream world is quite interesting... and there is something about the digital space that feeds into the abstractness of it all...?