Writing about Ladle Rat Rotten Hut the other day, one sentence I wrote reminded me inexorably of another string of words which is embedded in my mental rhythms – like the first one, reliant on intonation. Sound has it, in my book. (Which is odd, thinking about it, as I take in information almost entirely visually. Can sound be visual?) (Yes. We had that one.)
Here’s my sentence: “I chanced across something I have known by heart since I was about eleven.”
And here’s what it made me – that is, forced me – to think of:
“A year ago last Thursday I was strolling in the zoo, when I met a man who thought he knew the LOT.”
Great, isn’t it? It goes on like this:
“He was laying down the law about the habits of baboons, and the number of quills a porcupine has got… so I asked him: what’s that creature there? and he answered, that’s a helk – and I might have gone on thinking that was true – if the animal in question hadn’t PUT THAT CHAP TO SHAME, and and replied, I hain’t a helk. I’m a gnu…”
These kinds of things are probably, in truth, our biggest “influences” when writing – at least, mine. Forget all that Lowell and Borges stuff.
1 Comment
June 15, 2008 at 8:45 pm
love that picture because it makes them look like non-identical siamese twins … and fun !