Gnomes (day 82)

I woke up at four am to a massive thunderstorm and the phrase "the tiny gnome kingdom of Kyrgyzstan is living in your nostrils!" echoing in my head.

Today I want to talk a little bit about my hobby in the PCP banner. In my picture, I'm standing overlooking a ancient city in the Sahara desert, but I feel like a bit of a travel poseur. I enjoy it, but I can count the number of countries I've been to on two hands. In the other hobby picture I sent Patrick I'm squinched up on a tree branch, reading a blue book. (It's actually a repurposed book on anesthesia in which I pasted maps to Paris cheese and butterfly stores!) I love to read.

My first suggestion was that you read David Mitchell, for his sheer imagination and inventiveness. One of the authors that Mitchell looks up to, and rightly so, is Vladimir Nabokov. I would exhort, beg, and plead that you read Nabokov! Please start out with: Pale Fire, Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Pnin, and Speak, Memory. Although Nabokov's son was an opera star, Nabokov didn't enjoy music. I don't think you need music when you have rainbows suspended in your brain. Nabokov was a synesthete, which means that your brain mixes up two sensations, such as taste and sound. A trumpet squeal might taste like pickles, or the tinkle of a music box might taste of sugar. In Nabokov's case, each letter of the alphabet had a particular hue, as Jean Holabird illustrates here. Read him for his dreamy, dripping, luscious prose.