Not Really · 21 February 2002
Nudged awake by what Don DeLillo calls the ‘world hum’ I leap into my slippers (oh you should see these beauties – spotted from across the crowded market stalls at place de la comédie, tan suede perfect 44s with cork and leather soles; they beg to be worn, beg) and negotiate the stairs two at a time, whistling Schoenberg. I clang pots and pans to shake them free of their sleep, too, and then, gosh, while coffee burbles and children scatter I feel a sneeze coming on. Here, you see, I am faced with problem of a near-empty box of tissues (one finds the point at which the force required to extract a tissue from its box – or, rather, to overpower the grasp of the flap that serves them out one at a time – is precisely equal to the box’s weight: sooner or later that box will come with) and with a quick magician’s tablecloth snap of the wrist the box stays put and at once a long low foghorn echoes through the valley. Well, maybe you look into the tissue afterward, but I don’t. To work!
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