Today I read Ghost Q & A by Anne Carson. This is listed as a poem but I think it can be considered a short story too. I love it whatever it is.
Ghost Q & A is exactly as it sounds, a long question and answer session between a living person and a ghost. It reminded me of John Cage’s chance writing, or the automatic writing of the Surrealists. It’s funny, sweet, a little sad and sometimes confusing (in a good way). Here’s a little extract:
“Q do you see people can you see me
A if you close your eyes
Q what about moods
A the edges are freezing”
I also stumbled across this beautiful quote from Carson:
“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.”
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet (1998)
I think I may have to buy this…
I read Ghost Q & A over at This is a Public Space. Go and have a read and come back to tell me what you think in the comments.x
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