I Didn't Think I Had

If People Don't Read, That's Their Choice; A Lifelong Book Habit May Itself Be Some Sort Of Affliction.

The Place Didn't Look The Same But It Felt The Same; Sensations Clutched And Transformed Me. I Stood Outside Some Concrete And Plate-glass Tower-block, Picked A Handful Of Eucalyptus Leaves From A Branch, Crushed Them In My Hand, Smelt, And Tears Came To My Eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, On A Pavement Awash With Packaged American Matrons, Crying Not In Grief But In Wonder That Nothing Is Ever Lost, That Everything Can Be Retrieved, That A Lifetime Is Not Linear But Instant. That, Inside The Head, Everything Happens At Once.

The Day Is Refracted, And The Next And The One After That, All Of Them Broken Up Into A Hundred Juggled Segments, Each Brilliant And Self-contained So That The Hours Are No Longer Linear But Assorted Like Bright Sweets In A Jar.

There's A Preoccupation With Memory And The Operation Of Memory And A Rather Rapacious Interest In History.

I Didn't Write Anything Until I Was Well Over 30.