Good night. I just realized something. This was one of the first childrens books I not only read, but read cover-to-cover over and over of my own volition; if I recall correctly, I was in the hospital at the time, for days after a surgery when I was very very young, and my mom had packed this and some shitty animal picture books for me to read while I was alone. Id read just this and, in my small and ignorant head, marvel at the fact that I, The Reader, could best Grover in what I was imagining to be an attempt to genuinely hold me back. I loved the book to death. I still kind of miss it; I dont know what happened to it afterward, and even in my teens I kinda clamoured for it, to slip slowly back inside whatever thrills it gave me as a child. Its *postmodern* tho. Thats why. I liked the fact that it was *just a book* and yet worked so hard to convince me that it wasnt; I liked the fact that the invented middle-ground between Book and Non-Book was so seamless that we could see the pretense and enjoy it, want more of it. That I was knowing and unknowing a book as an object while reading it, seeing it try to break the boundary of its status as a Book and watching that barrier tear, but knowing it wasnt breaking, only warping. Id spend most of my youth then searching for things just like it and not knowing why. Id settle on Goosebumps Choose Your Own Scares - one time I had hoarded more than a dozen of them, only for them all to get water-damaged, but Id remember the high time of my twelve-year-old self sitting on the living room couch at midnight with a flashlight because everyones asleep and I mustnt put on a light to wake them, but Id be damned if I didnt find out what would happen if I went off alone in the dark trail on page 5 instead of following the crowd on page 3. And then I had the good fortune of reading House of Leaves, and it all went downhill from there - so many things came from it that I have yet to fully experience, Calvinos If on a winters night a traveler, Austers New York Trilogy, Perecs A Void, any Borges, any Eco. Im still trying to divorce myself from the rigid idea that work that pushes boundaries is childish; after all, play *is the goal*, and I shouldnt be as ashamed of that as often as I am in my work, even my poetry, even and especially because I am trying to make it as a Caribbean creator while avoiding the typical assumptions of West Indian literature. I should revel in the fact that a work can attempt to step outside its margins into the strange, that one can discover the emotionally weighty through the lyrically bizarre. I should make more work that looks like what I want to read, and not what I think people would not be afraid of. I should feel excited when people are afraid of, are confused by, hate something I made, just because of what it may look like. And I would not have even stumbled upon this bumpy road if Grover hadnt looked at me, me alone, in an empty sterile hospital bed, waving and shouting, Hello, everybodeee! Its the weekend. Have a good one, whatever youre up to. #HNSHN.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 02:07:33 +0000
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