Thursday, April 29, 2010

Livre de brouillon

The Livre de brouillon is a green notebook that has those words printed in cursive across the cover, on the lower part; higher up I wrote: "and the truth is that this name chokes me." It's a blank notebook -- that's how I like them, without lines -- so I could write drafts, notes, or whatever crossed my head. I call that year, between September '95 and July '96, the year of silence, because I was very lonely and isolated, so during the night I gushed out plenty of words in that apartment on the Rue Joseph de Maistre, close to the bohemian, or not so bohemian now, neighborhood of Montmartre. The story of how I got that two-bedroom apartment for only 800 francs a month (the equivalent at that time of 200 dollars more or less) is another story. For now, here it goes this introduction to the writings of the Livre de brouillon, name that means simply draft notebook, but in French sounds more interesting.

(Translation of the poem in the image:
The Toilet:
See it just as it is
don't be ashamed of its tidy rectitude.
He takes care of its duty
which nobody else does:
to dispose of the effects
that some consider precious
treasures of themselves and
deposit without delicacy
on its waters.)

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