Why I love Salman Rushdie
In the current New Yorker magazine, there’s a Salman Rushdie story titled In The South, which opens like this:
“The day that Junior fell down began like any other day: the explosion of heat rippling the air, the trumpeting sunlight, the traffic’s tidal surges, the prayer chants in the distance, the cheap film music rising from the floor below, the loud pelvic thrusts of an “item number” dancing across a neighbor’s TV, a child’s cry, a mother’s rebuke, unexplained laughter, scarlet expectorations, bicycles, the newly plaited hair of schoolgirls, the smell of strong sweet coffee, a green wing flashing in a tree…”
What puts the knife in my heart? That he ends the list of urban events and sounds with “…a green wing flashing in a tree.“
derek 10:29 am on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 Permalink |
No matter how urban we get, nature has away of showing through, even if it’s just a glimpse.
heath 1:31 pm on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 Permalink |
tiny hillocks of moss, brilliant in the rain, border a narrow squirrel-tamped path edging the parking lot out back…
derek 11:22 pm on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 Permalink |
is the brilliance in noticing such details of life, or is it in the sharing of them in such a poetic way……
ed 1:40 pm on Thursday, June 11, 2009 Permalink |
What more can anyone say? Cool, you two.
heath 4:50 pm on Thursday, June 11, 2009 Permalink |
the brilliance of the onlooker’s eye sees a green wing flashing in a tree.
derek 10:30 am on Friday, June 12, 2009 Permalink
brilliance upon brilliance and then a star is born