Dog in the rain (story)

It is Hallowe'en, best of days, and I am ill, but I want to mark the day somehow, so here is a morning-scrawled story of unease.

CW: light gore?
( Just before 6 a.m., in the dark of the morning, the air shimmered with rain. )

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Fragments from Barthes

Still slowly parsing my way through Roland Barthes.

From the fragment entitled "Les Amis - Friends" -- I liked this. (Barthes here is writing about himself, but in the third person.)

Just as we decompose the odor of violets or the taste of tea, each apparently so particular, so inimitable, so ineffable, into several elements whose subtle combination produces the entire identity of the substance, so he realized that the identity of each friend, which made that friend lovable, was based upon a delicately proportioned and henceforth absolutely original combination of tiny characteristics organized in fugitive scenes, from day to day. Thus each friend deployed in his presence the brilliant staging of his originality.

....

He likes to abide by the minor rites of friendship: to celebrate with a friend the release from a task, the solving of a problem: the celebration improves upon the event, adds to it an unnecessary addition, a perverse pleasure. Thus, by magic, this fragment has been written last, after all the others, as a kind of  dedication (September 3, 1974).

By "decompose" Barthes seems to mean something like what we would mean by "deconstruct" -- though maybe still with that resonance of productive decay -- to break down into constituent elements.

Writing is so imbued with desire for Barthes -- and in particular the act of interpretation, of drawing forth meaning -- that is is not, perhaps, surprising to see him rejoice in an analytical appreciation of his friends, but still, I find I am touched by his treatment of their characters as continually re-inscribed works of art.

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