Anodyne
Sunday, November 20, 2005
 

Fog thick and grey, water beaded on the car's windshield and on the tiny buds of the cherry tree by the apartment that blossoms every Christmas. A few pale pink petals open to the cool, moist air.

M. John Harrison's "A Young Man's Guide to Viriconium," the only piece of his Viriconium cycle I had not previously read:

"In Viriconium the light was like the light you only see on record covers and in the colour supplements. Photographic precision of outline under an empty blue sky is one of the most haunting features of the Viriconium landscape. Ordinary objects -- a book, a bowl of anemonies, someone's hand -- seem to be lit in a way which makes them very distinct from their background. The identity of things under this light seems enhanced. Their visual distinctness becomes metonymic of the reality we perceive both in them and in ourselves."
- posted by cjb @ 9:30 AM


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