The Vinyl Café Notebooks Read Online Free Page A
Author: Stuart Mclean
well, long after any of us are worrying about ants, and that ants probably don’t need anyone’s help, least of all mine, it did occur to me that the ants in my bathroom might be looking for a hand. It might not be the best time of the year for them to be up and about, and maybe they have been marching around my bathroom looking for something to eat. Scavenging is what the biologists would call it. So I got a little honey and mixed it with water and put out the honey water on the counter beside a small piece of tuna, and I sat down to see what would happen. And lo and behold, within ten minutes, my solitary ant had been joined by five of her sisters. They drank the honey water, but they seemed to like the tuna best.
And you don’t have to write me, telling me that it is a crazy thing to do, to feed ants. It may be crazy but no crazier than a lot of things I do. As far as I can see, these ants mean no harm to me. And I don’t mind sharing the odd teaspoon of protein. There is enough for all of us in my house. So I have kept feeding them, and I have been watching them, and I have almost figured out where they come from. I suspect that if I keep watching, and even follow along, there is no telling where they might lead me.
23 January 2010
KEEPSAKES
I have a small wooden bowl on my bedroom bureau. It is made of Norway pine. My uncle Hugh turned the bowl in his workshop when he lived on Flinders Island, off the southeast coast of Australia. I knew him by reputation only. I met him once, but that was when I was a boy. I know only that he was an architect, and a sailor, and that he lived in Melbourne, Australia, until he retired to Flinders Island, where he made my bowl.
I keep the bowl on my bureau because it is my connection to him. And through him, in a way I cannot fully explain, to my father’s boyhood, an event that happened in that faraway country and, therefore, an event that has always been far away from me.
We hold on to these things—photographs, old sweaters, jewellery, small bowls—in the hope that they will whisper a secret password, the door to memory will blow open and we’ll find ourselves alone, with all our little memories lined up and tagged, and stamped, and stickered, just for us.
Some come to us as birthrights, some as legacies of love. Some of them lead to a notch in our heart so plain that any fool could see it, there like a scratch across a dining room table or paint splashed on the kitchen floor.
Sometimes they lead us to memories so faint that we don’t even know we have them. Memories that haunt our hearts like watermarks, and we have to hold our hearts up to the light, and get the angle just right, because the memory isn’t really our memory, and we’re not sure how it got there, only that it lingers in our heart, the way smoke lingers in our hair after we have stood close to a fire.
These are the ciphers of memory, and when we find them we know they are trying to point us to something important, even if we can’t untangle the meaning. All we know is that this thing we are holding is an important thing, and we should cherish and protect it.
There is a small wooden bowl on my bureau. It is made of Norway pine.
2 February 2000
THE SENTIMENTALITY
OF SUITS
I was rummaging in a rarely visited corner of my closet when I came across my blue blazer. The moment I saw it, I was overtaken by a compulsion to put it on. I am wearing it now, as I sit writing, a little overdressed for a guy who won’t be leaving the house today: black jeans, a dress shirt and the blazer. Though in a private nod to my casual impulses, I have left the dress shirt untucked.
I haven’t worn the blazer for at least a decade. There is nothing wrong with it. In fact, as blazers go, it is a nice one: a pure wool Polo blazer, by Ralph Lauren, with a fetching redand-black pinstriped silk lining.
I bought it when I worked, briefly, in television, which means it is at least twenty-five years old. But it is a classic
And you don’t have to write me, telling me that it is a crazy thing to do, to feed ants. It may be crazy but no crazier than a lot of things I do. As far as I can see, these ants mean no harm to me. And I don’t mind sharing the odd teaspoon of protein. There is enough for all of us in my house. So I have kept feeding them, and I have been watching them, and I have almost figured out where they come from. I suspect that if I keep watching, and even follow along, there is no telling where they might lead me.
23 January 2010
KEEPSAKES
I have a small wooden bowl on my bedroom bureau. It is made of Norway pine. My uncle Hugh turned the bowl in his workshop when he lived on Flinders Island, off the southeast coast of Australia. I knew him by reputation only. I met him once, but that was when I was a boy. I know only that he was an architect, and a sailor, and that he lived in Melbourne, Australia, until he retired to Flinders Island, where he made my bowl.
I keep the bowl on my bureau because it is my connection to him. And through him, in a way I cannot fully explain, to my father’s boyhood, an event that happened in that faraway country and, therefore, an event that has always been far away from me.
We hold on to these things—photographs, old sweaters, jewellery, small bowls—in the hope that they will whisper a secret password, the door to memory will blow open and we’ll find ourselves alone, with all our little memories lined up and tagged, and stamped, and stickered, just for us.
Some come to us as birthrights, some as legacies of love. Some of them lead to a notch in our heart so plain that any fool could see it, there like a scratch across a dining room table or paint splashed on the kitchen floor.
Sometimes they lead us to memories so faint that we don’t even know we have them. Memories that haunt our hearts like watermarks, and we have to hold our hearts up to the light, and get the angle just right, because the memory isn’t really our memory, and we’re not sure how it got there, only that it lingers in our heart, the way smoke lingers in our hair after we have stood close to a fire.
These are the ciphers of memory, and when we find them we know they are trying to point us to something important, even if we can’t untangle the meaning. All we know is that this thing we are holding is an important thing, and we should cherish and protect it.
There is a small wooden bowl on my bureau. It is made of Norway pine.
2 February 2000
THE SENTIMENTALITY
OF SUITS
I was rummaging in a rarely visited corner of my closet when I came across my blue blazer. The moment I saw it, I was overtaken by a compulsion to put it on. I am wearing it now, as I sit writing, a little overdressed for a guy who won’t be leaving the house today: black jeans, a dress shirt and the blazer. Though in a private nod to my casual impulses, I have left the dress shirt untucked.
I haven’t worn the blazer for at least a decade. There is nothing wrong with it. In fact, as blazers go, it is a nice one: a pure wool Polo blazer, by Ralph Lauren, with a fetching redand-black pinstriped silk lining.
I bought it when I worked, briefly, in television, which means it is at least twenty-five years old. But it is a classic
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