some meandering thoughts on the nature of books and love affairs.

In my new booklet-in-progress, there is a momentary scene where the main character falls through an open door drawn into an easel and lands in the living room of a dollhouse. Above the living room is the bedroom, and in storyboarding it I was determined to make the bed a sort of replica of the little boy's bed in Winsor McKay's Little Nemo in Wonderland, which might well be the Greatest Graphica Ever. It's my own little (but Reverent) hats off to his Genius, which, had I not recorded it here, might have gone unnoticed by the world (but will now of course be revered by the (ahem) utter and voluminous masses that are my bloggy readership.)

ANYHOW.

On a seemingly unrelated note (but wait for it), I picked up Jeanette Winterson's "Lighthousekeeping" the other day, as one would call up an old friend for tea. I don't do this as often as I should, ever beseiged by "what's left to read", rather than what I already have. (I nearly started crying I was so excited as I started to read it, 'coz i'm JUST THAT SORT of person. This trait seems to be getting worse with age, so senility is obviously not as far from the tender age of 34 as I once thought.)

ANYHOW.

(A quick back-pedal. Jeanette Winterson, for those who may not be familiar, is addicted to Virginia Woolf. She has written Exemplary essays on Orlando (Thumpa Thumpa), AND The Waves (i myself found this one a bit more difficult to get through), and salutes the legacy of Woolf's writing frequently when speaking of her own.)

Lighthousekeeping is basically (VERY basically) about a little orphaned girl sent to live with a blind lighthousekeeper named Pew and inherit his duties accordingly. A paragraph describing her first journey in a little outboard motor to her new home, ends with these words: "I couldn't go back. There was only forward, northwards into the sea. To the lighthouse."

As I read this I imagined Ms. Winterson consumed with UTTER GLEE as she wrote that last small sentence, which is, of course, the title of one of Ms. Woolf's seminal literary works.

On those rare occasions when I notice these little things that happen between writers/artists, it seems to me that Love involves respect for legacy, i think. Acknowledging ones parents, so to speak, even if they only exist between dustcovers.

I know some people who would call this arrogant, an inaccessible inside joke, a secret reference, an "in-club".

But by that logic, doesn't that make love-affairs "in-clubs" as well?