city, 25 Prince Edward Street, Glasgow
Woke up like this!
Last night I fell asleep with a lot of things on top of me. That is: not just a duvet, or a phone, or my glassy, dry contacts stuck to my random ban t-shirt, removed in my sleep, or the residue of a very dry croissant eaten late at night, leaving a confetti of flakey crumbs on my white linen sheets. That too, but also this book, a heavy one, open and parted at the middle, like a small mountain sitting on my leg, weighing me down, which is nice, on a morning in bed after a late night, when you want excuses not to get up.
Decided on the book sometime last night, after the party, after deciding it was already too late to be just night, it was already light, it was already day, and I couldn’t sleep, or so I told myself, getting this brick of a book down from the shelf, getting comfortable in my white linen sheets, only to open the book and settle it comfortable on my knee, like a little mountain, and think about this little mountain, what kind of mountain it was. Then dreams.
I woke up like this! 1040 pages, I count, not by reading, but by peaking at the page number on the final page, that being the final page of words before the blank pages I don’t know the purpose of. But they are there as well, weighing me down as well, and I wonder if the words weigh me down too, thousands or maybe millions of words I haven’t read, but still know, from flickering through the pages, doing it really quickly, and listening to that nice little sound of flipping through the pages like this, and feeling the light breeze of a thousand pages turning in a quick succession. Like a miniature fan, and that soft breeze on my face, that you want, in bed, in the morning, that is now the afternoon, after a party, not wanting to think but also wanting something to cover up the sound of discomfort inside your head, that isn’t exactly loud but needs to be covered up anyway, so you listen to the sounds of pages turning, and you listen to the sounds outside the window.
Outside the window, afternoon airplanes in the sky. Outside the window, birds quarrelling in the fig tree. Outside the window, Lana del Rey on someone’s phone speaker, played on repeat, just Venice Bitch over and over as if that was really funny, but Lana once lived here, in this city, it is said, kind of, and if you google her name and the name of this city, it will tell you that this city is her happy place, meaning Glasgow, not Venice, and by Venice, I don’t mean the beach, but the biennale, not that it really matters, and not that Venice is a biennale, it exists all year, every year, at least for a bit longer, and when it no longer does, the art will be transported to another Venice, so I’m sure this world can hold more than one Venice, it already does. It holds several biennales, at least, and it holds countless art fairs, while the cities merge into one another, just like Art Basel Miami is not in Basel and doesn’t really have anything to do with Basel other than the fact that there is also an Art Basel in Basel, but there is also one in Hong Kong and even one in Paris. Soon, there will also be one in Doha. All these cities, with their Basels, cities that could just as well be called Art. Or Venice. I guess, from bed, with my mountain in my lap, everywhere and nowhere at once.
This is a very thick book that is asking not to be read, only to be placed on your knee, like a mountain, and you can look at the book and think of the book and pronounce the writer’s name to yourself the way one imagine pronouncing it to other people at the party, last night, if it had come up in conversation, which it didn’t, which is good, because you haven’t read him, even now you aren’t reading him, and after all it’s just a thing to weigh you down, which is nice when you are a bit sleepy in the afternoon. Quite nice, this way. Keeping it this way.
Emma Aars
