Kepingan Ingatan dalam Potongan Perenggan

Salah satu novel dari Amerika yang saya masih ulang baca ialah Dept. Of Speculation karangan Jenny Offill. Kisahnya sangat mudah, hubungan seorang Isteri bersama suami dan anak perempuannya. Tetapi fikiran dan memori Isteri disusun sebagai fragmen yang boleh dipegang setiap satu dan dilontar ke udara menjadi bunga api. Novelis selalu bercakap tentang baris; mereka akan habiskan masa berminggu-minggu untuk menggubah baris paling sempurna. Tetapi saya tidak ingat baris apabila saya membaca Jenny Offill. Saya ingat perenggan. 

Perenggan juga yang membezakan novel Jenny Offill dengan novel Agustin Fernandez Mallo. Di mana Offill menggunakan perenggan, Mallo menggunakan bab. Offil menggambarkan bagaimana sebuah novel boleh menjadi kabinet memori dengan laci-laci yang terbuka dan tertutup. Sementara bagi seorang Agustin Fernandez Mallo, novel adalah dunia, dan dalam dunia itu ingatan adalah fakta. 

Saya kongsikan di bawah beberapa perenggan daripada novel Offill.

* * *

Lately, the wife has been thinking about God, in whom the husband no longer believes. The wife has an idea to meet her ex-boyfriend at the park. Maybe they could talk about God. Then make out. Then talk about God again. 

* * *

I have lunch with a friend I haven't seen in years. She orders things I've never heard of, sends back a piece of middling fish. I tell her various schemes to redeem my life. "I'm so compromised," she says. 

* * *

Sometimes she will come in complaining about seeing things when she closes her eyes at night. Streaks of light, she says. Stars. 

* * *

Three things no one has ever said about me:

You make it look so easy.

You are very mysterious. 

You need to take yourself more seriously. 

* * *

A woman at a playground explains her dilemma. They have finally found a house, a brownstone with four floors and a garden, perfectly maintained, on the loveliest of blocks in the least anxiety producing of school districts, but now she finds that she spends much of her day on one floor looking for something that has actually been left on another floor.

* * *

A Lebanese proverb: The bedbug has a hundred children and thinks them too few.