Anodyne
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
 

Potpourri

On the express bus, an artworld colleague shows me a handful of autumn leaves, all reds and yellows and greens.

"A person was unlikely to enjoy asking favours from a position of grotesque inferiority." (A.L. Kennedy)

"He stood up and went to the table where he'd thrown his pants over the typewriter when he'd come in last night. He got his wallet out of the back pocket, some folding money out of the front pocket. The change fell on the floor, quarters and dimes scattering over the room in a way that might have resembled the beginning of the universe. It wasn't ten o'clock in the morning and he'd already discovered the big bang." (Pete Dexter)

"Ill equipped and even more ill prepared, Mr. Newby never made it to the top of Mir Samir, though not for lack of imagination. To train for the ascent up the rock-strewn, icy mountain, he spent four days rock climbing in the Welsh countryside. He struck out for Afghanistan armed with British resoluteness, a pair of new boots and an exquisite taste for the absurd.

He also carried a very useful pamphlet on how to climb mountains, which he stopped to read on the slopes of Mir Samir, just a thousand feet from the summit." (NYT obituary of Eric Newby, above, world traveller and amateur mountaineer)
- posted by cjb @ 11:29 AM


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