Reading The Loop by Jacques Roubaud, part 9
map 1: §11 —> §73 —> §11 —> §74 —> §11 —> §12 —> §75 —> §12 —> §13 —> §76 —> §13 —> §14
map 2: pp. 49, 241, 242, 49, 50, 51, 52, 242, 243, 244, 52, 53, 54, 55, 244, 245, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 246, 247, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64
For fig trees are beautiful trees. —p57
For they are green and leafy. For they cover our shame. For they provide us with fruit. For they can hide cats and children. For the cats will be considered. For one is named Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. For I have just borrowed from Christopher Smart. And for that I must now stop.
It was from this that it derived its disjunctive power. —p57
I am forcing myself to do this. I am sitting here, listening to John Coltrane scream into a saxophone in Japan many years ago, and I am forcing myself to do this. It feels foreign. I suppose it ought to. It feels also wrong. I am not the one who should be sitting here doing this. This task is for the other me.
[the fig tree] has an ambiguity that could almost be called divine: Where does this force come from, this fibrous wooden impetus, the irresistible pressure being exerted as though consciously on the stones, on their cohesion, on the bond holding the masonry of the house together? What's the meaning of this disturbing impulsion, and why is it manifesting here, under these particular circumstances? What demon is inhabiting this tree, disguised as a household God? —p57
What's getting in the way—in my(?) way—I think, is a memory of the future. Or at least it certainly feels like a nostalgia for something that has not yet happened (and now might not at all, having been, after a fashion, named). John Coltrane has stopped screaming, but is still trying to play all the notes.