...Sdrawkcab
An extremely long day marking; not much more to be said on it but that...
K- was late back, having had to take an alternative, walking-rich route because of the tube strike and I was still marking away at the kitchen table anyway, so we ended up having supper at a very late hour indeed. Nothing worth watching on the TV so we found a random episode of Red Dwarf on Watch Again, which turned out to be 'Backwards', the opener to the third series. A cool premise as often with this daft series which leads to characters getting sucked down a time hole into an alternative universe where time runs backwards. Words are in backwards mirror writing, language is indecipherably spoken backwards, chronology is reversed, drinks are spat out and food disgorged; people, presumably, get younger day by day. There is no fear of death. Everyone inevitably hurtles towards birth. One could almost conceive it as a possibility.
And indeed many writers have. Martin Amis in Time's Arrow for one. And, arguably, the pattern for this, Philip K Dick's Counter Clock World. And then there's Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five where time shunts forwards and backwards and all over the place.
Not just the province of fiction writers though. Poets seem to like this idea of time flowing back. It doesn't have to be sci fi literal. It could just be a process of mental reflection, similar to what we do in a contemplative spell, think back and back to the origins of a particular prediliction or aversion, for instance. Or just back to our earliest concept of self and surroundings. It doesn't have to be heavy. Here's the start of Matthew Sweeney's 'Fishbones Dreaming' which, although ostensibly a children's poem, has spawned many an interesting class exercise (erm - is there such as a thing as an interesting class exercise? I'd like to think so, but then, I'm not generally on the receiving end of them):
Fishbones lay in the smelly bin.
He was a head, a backbone and a tail.
Soon the cats would be in for him.
He didn’t like to be this way.
He shut his eyes and dreamed back.
Back to when he was fat, and hot on a plate.
Beside green beans, with lemon juice
Squeezed on him. And a man with a knife
And fork raised, about to eat him.
He didn’t like to be this way.
He shut his eyes and dreamed back.
Back to when he was frozen in the freezer.
With lamb cutlets and minced beef and prawns.
Three months he was in there....
In a way it's like a ballad, with refrain and linked fragment of narrative, albeit a regressing one. Eventually though Mr Fishbones gets back to:
when he was darting through the sea,
past crabs and jellyfish, and others like himself.
Or surfacing to jump for flies and feel the sun on his face.
He liked to be this way.
He dreamed hard to try and stay there.
Ending with a nice permutation of the linking refrain.
It can be a lot weirder than that though. Here's one that subverts the 'film running backwards' figure of speech
Retreat (Charles Harper Webb)
Before she can deliver
the cruncher,
I stride away backwards,
my car door opens,
I fall in
as the engine fires.
I speed home in reverse,
unshave, unshower,
plop down in my easy chair
where, picturing what a good
night it’s going to be,
I slowly spit up
A manhattan - dry -
just the way
I like it.
That's more like the Red Dwarf take. Everything goes backwards, just like reversed video. And speaking of 'the video', how about this one by Fleur Adcock, conveniently named so. Ceri is the elder sibling suddenly supplanted in her mother's affections by the arrival of baby Laura. For some reason Dad had videotaped said arrival - i.e., the birth. Never a good idea I've have thought. Here's the second of the two stanzas:
After she had a little sister,
and Mum had gone back to being thin,
and was twice as busy, Ceri played
the video again and again.
She watched Laura come out, and then,
in reverse, she made her go back in.
Ouch. Actions speak louder than words. But in a way this is the more inventive of the three, as the more I'm sitting here considering, the more just straight reversal of time in a story or a poem these days seems to be a bit of an overworked trope. It needs messing up, needs a rewind. And I've already blogged about the 'specula' form of Julia Copus - since found that Pauline Stainer has written in this form too, calling it a 'mirror cannon'.
Funny how alarming people find this backwards business to be. Superstitions, satanism, the black mass - all involve intoning ritual chants in reverse. And do you remember all that fuss about playing heavy/black/death metal LPs in reverse in order to hear the subliminal suicide instructions embedded therein? I suppose it's more of the uncanny, the unnatural. Like left handed people, a mirroring deviation from the norm: sinister.
Saying the alphabet backwards. Supposed to be a cure for hiccups. I can do it; I learnt the requisite silly verse (I can't bring myself to call it 'poem') at a formative age. It starts, 'Said Wye, "eggs double you fee, your tea is our QV..." the rest is classified but you probably get the idea. It was my quirky party trick for a while. Writing backwards, though. I used to do it all the time. Literally. By hand. Can't quite remember how I first cultivated the technique, but I used to use it when I was a precious adolescent (and later) to put down thoughts or just allay anxiety by scribbling on any old envelope or in notebook. I kind of wanted to be noticed but didn't want anyone to read what I wrote. I can still do it - it comes out as real scrawl. I had a vague notion that writing from right to left was more suitable for inward-directed, personal articulation. You go towards the heart that way you see, rather than outwards, away from it. You could (well, I could) just about decipher this backwards writing I used to do if it was held reversed up to the light, when the paper's thin enough; or by holding up in front of a mirror. Funny business. The mirrors would do well to reflect further...But a bit like blogging perhaps? Blogs are very like the traditional journal, writer's or otherwise, except you are set up to read from end to start. Hypertexting about if you want to do that too, of course. But the only linearity encouraged is, chronologically a backwards one.
No reason I can think of why a life shouldn't be read as it is reflected on, just this way. In my end is my beginning...
K- was late back, having had to take an alternative, walking-rich route because of the tube strike and I was still marking away at the kitchen table anyway, so we ended up having supper at a very late hour indeed. Nothing worth watching on the TV so we found a random episode of Red Dwarf on Watch Again, which turned out to be 'Backwards', the opener to the third series. A cool premise as often with this daft series which leads to characters getting sucked down a time hole into an alternative universe where time runs backwards. Words are in backwards mirror writing, language is indecipherably spoken backwards, chronology is reversed, drinks are spat out and food disgorged; people, presumably, get younger day by day. There is no fear of death. Everyone inevitably hurtles towards birth. One could almost conceive it as a possibility.
And indeed many writers have. Martin Amis in Time's Arrow for one. And, arguably, the pattern for this, Philip K Dick's Counter Clock World. And then there's Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five where time shunts forwards and backwards and all over the place.
Not just the province of fiction writers though. Poets seem to like this idea of time flowing back. It doesn't have to be sci fi literal. It could just be a process of mental reflection, similar to what we do in a contemplative spell, think back and back to the origins of a particular prediliction or aversion, for instance. Or just back to our earliest concept of self and surroundings. It doesn't have to be heavy. Here's the start of Matthew Sweeney's 'Fishbones Dreaming' which, although ostensibly a children's poem, has spawned many an interesting class exercise (erm - is there such as a thing as an interesting class exercise? I'd like to think so, but then, I'm not generally on the receiving end of them):
Fishbones lay in the smelly bin.
He was a head, a backbone and a tail.
Soon the cats would be in for him.
He didn’t like to be this way.
He shut his eyes and dreamed back.
Back to when he was fat, and hot on a plate.
Beside green beans, with lemon juice
Squeezed on him. And a man with a knife
And fork raised, about to eat him.
He didn’t like to be this way.
He shut his eyes and dreamed back.
Back to when he was frozen in the freezer.
With lamb cutlets and minced beef and prawns.
Three months he was in there....
In a way it's like a ballad, with refrain and linked fragment of narrative, albeit a regressing one. Eventually though Mr Fishbones gets back to:
when he was darting through the sea,
past crabs and jellyfish, and others like himself.
Or surfacing to jump for flies and feel the sun on his face.
He liked to be this way.
He dreamed hard to try and stay there.
Ending with a nice permutation of the linking refrain.
It can be a lot weirder than that though. Here's one that subverts the 'film running backwards' figure of speech
Retreat (Charles Harper Webb)
Before she can deliver
the cruncher,
I stride away backwards,
my car door opens,
I fall in
as the engine fires.
I speed home in reverse,
unshave, unshower,
plop down in my easy chair
where, picturing what a good
night it’s going to be,
I slowly spit up
A manhattan - dry -
just the way
I like it.
That's more like the Red Dwarf take. Everything goes backwards, just like reversed video. And speaking of 'the video', how about this one by Fleur Adcock, conveniently named so. Ceri is the elder sibling suddenly supplanted in her mother's affections by the arrival of baby Laura. For some reason Dad had videotaped said arrival - i.e., the birth. Never a good idea I've have thought. Here's the second of the two stanzas:
After she had a little sister,
and Mum had gone back to being thin,
and was twice as busy, Ceri played
the video again and again.
She watched Laura come out, and then,
in reverse, she made her go back in.
Ouch. Actions speak louder than words. But in a way this is the more inventive of the three, as the more I'm sitting here considering, the more just straight reversal of time in a story or a poem these days seems to be a bit of an overworked trope. It needs messing up, needs a rewind. And I've already blogged about the 'specula' form of Julia Copus - since found that Pauline Stainer has written in this form too, calling it a 'mirror cannon'.
Funny how alarming people find this backwards business to be. Superstitions, satanism, the black mass - all involve intoning ritual chants in reverse. And do you remember all that fuss about playing heavy/black/death metal LPs in reverse in order to hear the subliminal suicide instructions embedded therein? I suppose it's more of the uncanny, the unnatural. Like left handed people, a mirroring deviation from the norm: sinister.
Saying the alphabet backwards. Supposed to be a cure for hiccups. I can do it; I learnt the requisite silly verse (I can't bring myself to call it 'poem') at a formative age. It starts, 'Said Wye, "eggs double you fee, your tea is our QV..." the rest is classified but you probably get the idea. It was my quirky party trick for a while. Writing backwards, though. I used to do it all the time. Literally. By hand. Can't quite remember how I first cultivated the technique, but I used to use it when I was a precious adolescent (and later) to put down thoughts or just allay anxiety by scribbling on any old envelope or in notebook. I kind of wanted to be noticed but didn't want anyone to read what I wrote. I can still do it - it comes out as real scrawl. I had a vague notion that writing from right to left was more suitable for inward-directed, personal articulation. You go towards the heart that way you see, rather than outwards, away from it. You could (well, I could) just about decipher this backwards writing I used to do if it was held reversed up to the light, when the paper's thin enough; or by holding up in front of a mirror. Funny business. The mirrors would do well to reflect further...But a bit like blogging perhaps? Blogs are very like the traditional journal, writer's or otherwise, except you are set up to read from end to start. Hypertexting about if you want to do that too, of course. But the only linearity encouraged is, chronologically a backwards one.
No reason I can think of why a life shouldn't be read as it is reflected on, just this way. In my end is my beginning...
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