Things are Looking Up

I'm currently reading Paul Auster's Winter Journal, which seems particularly fitting as this winter is refusing to go away. So much about Auster's writing resonates with me – I find his work to be full of tenderness and humanity. His autobiographical writing particularly touches me and when we heard him speak about his work and read from Winter Journal at the Cheltenham Literature Festival last autumn, I was pleased to see that the man is as warm-hearted as his writing. He has chosen to write this memoir in the second person, which has the effect of excluding the audience as he seems to address only himself while simultaneously being the voice of everyone; it is intimate and open-armed.

After the show, Dad and I raced around to the book signing and managed to get our own signed copies. But when it finally came to meeting my literary hero, I found myself completely dumbstruck and could only beam at him. Yet, I feel that a connection was made; at least, he grinned back.

I came across this passage in Winter Journal yesterday, which again made me feel a connection with Auster. It is a segment in which he describes the physical sensations of living an ordinary life:

'feeling the different sensations of walking on wooden floors, cement floors, tile floors, and stone floors, the different sensations of putting your feet on sand, dirt, and grass, but most of all the sensation of sidewalks, for that is how you see yourself whenever you stop to think about who you are: a man who walks, a man who has spent his life walking through city streets' (Auster, 2012, p. 59).

I too think of myself as someone who walks, someone who has spent my life walking through city streets. It's my default mode of transport, as easy as breathing, free and reliable.

However, recently it has been observed that when I walk I always look down. I like to think that this is for practical reasons – to keep an eye on where I'm going, to avoid uncovered manholes, banana skins. Looking down has other advantages too - like spying these crocuses peeping out from the snow. Or these footprints of man, dog and child.

But my walking partner tells me that I'm missing out by focussing on the pavement. So I've started to look up and pay more attention to the world around me when I'm out walking.

Looking up this week I've noticed how the old and the new combine in very pleasing ways in the City Centre as Queen Victoria looks down at the Iron Man.

 

And I spotted this pair of pigeons snuggling up together in the branches just outside our house as the icy wind continues to blow us through March.