In Cold Enough For Snow, a new book by the Australian writer Jessica Au, the narrator is on a trip to Japan with her mother; they are traveling together but remain at a distance, isolated in their own experiences. In a book light on external plot the trip serves as a frame, moving the characters from one exhibit or restaurant to another and allowing for the narrator's reflections on what she is seeing and what for her is evoked in memory by those sights. At a showing of antique textiles, the narrator thinks "I wanted for some reason to speak more about the room, and what I had felt in it, that strange keenness. Wasn't it incredible, I wanted to say, that once there were people who were able to look at the world--leaves, trees, rivers, grass--and see its patterns, and, even more incredible, that they were able to find the essence of those patterns, and put them into cloth?" These personal responses to art, decoupled from academic analysis, are particularly moving. The connections she makes between artworks, memories, and feelings are often both wholly unexpected and entirely believable, giving voice to the strange ways our memories are catalogued and the ability of art to send long quiet feelings back onto the stage of our consciousness.
Everything this week sent me on a joyous journey. From stirring the memories of my own time in Japan, to delving into the loveliness of the herbarium, to fondness for an apple tree lost to me last year. Always so much in your posts to delight and inspire!
Everything this week sent me on a joyous journey. From stirring the memories of my own time in Japan, to delving into the loveliness of the herbarium, to fondness for an apple tree lost to me last year. Always so much in your posts to delight and inspire!