My recent posts have compared the white sprayed stucco ceiling of my Mom's suburban house with the beautiful blue ceiling of my house downtown.
This post is about the IJ chapter which begins: "The following things in the room were blue."
The room in question is the headmaster's waiting room:
"Charles Tavis liked to say that you could tell a lot about an administrator by the decor of his waiting room."
The room has wallpaper with a blue-sky motif which Hal hates:
"...Hal loathes sky-and-cloud wallpaper because it makes him feel high-altitude and disoriented and sometimes plummeting."
Hmm - I wonder if this is similar to the sky motif of the book cover?
The cover that I just recently posted.
How did my mind anticipate these nuances?
It's just a coincidence right?
Tell me that I'm not trapped inside IJ, living IJ, thinking like DFW.
I always thought this way.
I wasn't changed by a book, a writer.
I haven't started thinking like the writer, talking like the writer, writing like the writer - have I?
We all muse about rooms and colours don't we?
All of us are deeply emotionally affected by rooms, spaces, environments - aren't we?
You all understand don't you why those suburban ceilings depressed me don't you?
But the depression wasn't bad though. I mean I wasn't suicidal or anything. The sight of those ceilings (and rooms, and houses and streets and people) was just very, very painful and I just felt trapped is all. Not suicidal.
Besides, I had books. Books over-rode the monstrous sameness of the burbs. Books got me out. Gave me hope. Entertained my brain. They were The Entertainment - and the hope. For if I had been forced to spend my time in those horrendous suburban rooms without books - wait a minute - I wouldn't be alive today.
Wait a minute - books saved my life.
But I wasn't suicidal.
Other people are suicidal.
And suicide is a very obvious thing that hits you quickly like a bolt of lightning or a car accident.
You know what they say in newpaper code: "He died SUDDENLY".
Boom. Quick. That's suicide. A nuclear bomb.
Like when my brother died. Like when DFW died.
It - suicide - is not a long, long period of pain that wears you down until you got nothing left.
No.
It's got nothing to do with feeling trapped. Like in a cage.
No.
No, it's sudden.
Out of the blue.
Right?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Surely You Jest...