For the last few days, I’ve been exhausting an attempt at mimicking Georges Perec’s detective writing style while I read his An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. He sits for three days at the same spot at Saint-Sulpice in October 1974 and records the ultra-mundane, until he portrays what happens when nothing happens.
“Wholesale potatoes. A lady taking three children to school (two of them have long red hats with pom-poms).” (13)
“A blind man coming from rue des Canettes passes by in front of the café; he’s a young man, with a rather confident way of walking. An 86 passes by. Two men with pipes and black satchels. A man with a black satchel and no pipe.” (12)
Then, oddly, yesterday I went for a walk in in the graveyard at Neustift Friedhof and began mimicking his writing style.
I walk past rows and rows of graves.
Names.
Dates.
1822.
1904.
2024.
Green shoots push through the old pavement.
The path inclines.
The road bends.
You can see it: the earth is round.
An elderly man appears from the other end, walking sticks in hand.
We look at each other.
A smile is exchanged.
He passes.
A wooden playground comes into view.
A brown treehouse.
A long steel slide.
A bucket half-full of sand.
One blue glove.
A seesaw resting on one side.
A tire swing turning slightly in the cold air.
I could really go on… :)))))) I’m just trying to keep the anxiety at bay – MFA results are out in two weeks.