Sometimes

Sometimes I find a chapter in The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk that I like more than others. Sometimes I find my favorite chapter and love it because it is lyrical. Sometimes I show it to my husband. Sometimes my husband laughs at the literary feat of an author we both recognize to be a genius, no matter what negative thoughts I may have cultivated about his hero.


Sometimes the feat is to call the chapter Sometimes and begin every sentence with "Sometimes" and write four pages in a single Faulkneresque paragraph, with added punctuation. Sometimes I take a fluorescent yellow textmarker and highlight the favorite sentences in a text,even though it isn't a lesson. Sometimes I select my top favorite sentences in that chapter and transcribe them to you, my readers, because of my dire need to share the poetry. Sometimes the topic is essentially about the routine of evening TV watching. Sometimes I attempt to imitate Pamuk's style, all the while wondering how it really sounds in its original Turkish instead of the translated English.

"Sometimes it would rain and we would listen to the raindrops against the windowpanes. Sometimes we would say, "How hot it is." [...] Sometimes a funny thing happened on television, and we would all burst out laughing at once. Sometimes it would seem ridiculous the way we all got sucked into whatever was happening on the screen. [...] Sometimes I would see a cockroach scurrying across the kitchen floor.[...] Sometimes I would forget Time altogether, and nestle into "now" as if it were a soft bed. [...] Sometimes Aunt Nesibe spoke about Sureyya, the former queen of Iran, of her anguish when the Shah divorced her for failing to give him an heir, and of her life in high society in Europe. [...] Sometimes the television would say "Snow tomorrow," but it wouldn't come. [...] Sometimes Aunt Nesibe would bring out something from the refrigerator and ask us what happened in the film while she'd been away.[...] Sometimes I was absolutely positive that life itself wasn't somewhere else, but right there, at that table. [...] Sometimes it would snow, and it would snow and it would stick on the window frames and on the sidewalks."


Sometimes I write one post too many about Orhan Pamuk.

Enjoy this piece by Depeche Mode entitled "Sometimes" as the perfect soundtrack to this posting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0U6d-XsmoQ