I wonder if there’s anybody who can read into a podcastophone and take dictation of his or her inner monologue simultaneously. I can’t, much to my own absolute dismay. If I could, the past half hour would have been written up this way:
I dreamt last night that I was a reluctant part of some Truman Showy podcasting reality television show, forced to read literature into one of those cellphone hands-free microphones round-the-clock from a text that was projected onto the insides of my eyelids, with the occasional pauses in my reading at chapter breaks to sip coffee or talk to people or, you know, to breathe and stuff.
A secret: Endurance Reading is nothing new for Miette. She’s participated in marathon readings of epic Greek poetry, she stays up on Bloomsday and reads along, she reads you Dostoevsky five straight nights, no sweat off her permanently furrowed brow, not your Miette, no how.
On a walk this afternoon, I spotted curbside an abandoned 1972 volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, volume 4 (BOTHA TO CARTHAGE!!) which somehow mysteriously made its way from its landfill destiny to my grubby paw and later, to a treasured position on my mantle (or my world’s equivalent of a mantle… equally special. Mantleworthy)
Quite possibly the quietest, most listless, bottomless podcast of Kerouac you’ve ever experienced, this. Possibly? Quite possibly. But not without due charm on its own, and intent at that! For listen: do you hear the passing buses in the background, the motorcycles, the car horns, the screaming pedestrians?
Oh boy, oh boy, guess who’s excited about tonight’s podcast?
It’s me, Miette– I’m excited, silly listener. You see, in the insuppressible excitement of putting books in boxes for an upcoming move, I found, surprisingly dust-free and hidden behind a small stack, a volume of Rilke prose!
MEMORANDUM
To: fair listeners
From: Miette
Re: the random audible aspiration to be heard in this podcast
Presenting the first somniloquent entry to this Our Podcast, and if only I were kidding! Regular aural peekers might know Miette as a determined and faithful insomniac, and I wouldn’t dare disappoint. Upon waking this morning I found…
This longish-short comedo-tragic bit just about covers everything. And for those things not covered in the “just about” disclaimer, you might have fun over a few spare moments with this Barth reference. Or if you don’t, well, I sure did, and do I need further reason to P’cast?
Um, there must be some mistake, I think. Climate Change means that weather systems need to be… well… not the same muggy filthy smoggy dogbreath-upon-shoulders-every-time-you-step-outside. I accept, grudgingly, the current sorry state of the skies, but really: it’s going to change, right? Some day?