SA4QE 2022 - Katy W - Colchester, United Kingdom

For the last few years I have put up quotes in my village for sa4qe on my own, so it was lovely to be able to do it this year with my boyfriend, Rik, whom I met through a conversation on Twitter about Hoban. We bonded through our mutual love of The Medusa Frequency in particular. I live next to a river and wanted my first quote - sellotaped to the local lifebuoy - to be one of Hoban's lyrical evocations of the natural world; this mix of lyricism and natural elements feels romantic too.

Hear the earth say itself, say itself ponderous with evening, turning to the night.

What passes for reality seems to me mostly a load of old nonsense invented by not very inventive minds. The reality that interests me is strange and flickering and haunting.

Rik and I wandered along to the river jetty. While he was taping up his quote on one side of this, I taped my second one to the other side. This quote is a perennial favourite, showing Hoban's trademark profundity and comedy, and one I feel random strangers should be subjected to regularly. We were watched by two men on a nearby boat, one of whom later sauntered over to investigate and then grinned as he walked past us.

Sometimes in the small hours of the morning, while [X] sleeps peacefully beside me, I sit up in the dark, feeling myself and the world moving from the known to the unknown...

My final quote went up on the village Notice Board. Coming from the last page of Fremder, when the character feels optimistic and romantic, when the world feels full of 'becoming', this has personal resonance (I took out the name of Fremder's girlfriend so the piece could be read as a woman speaking in the first person too).

What passes for reality seems to me mostly a load of old nonsense invented by not very inventive minds. The reality that interests me is strange and flickering and haunting.

Lastly, we went to the local village shop where I left smaller versions of my quotes under or on baked bean tins, jelly packets, pots of baking soda. Rik was official quote-on-tin photographer as well as the 'look-out', ensuring our Hobanesque antics weren't spotted by the staff. I like the idea of people lifting a food tin and finding a Hoban quote under it about the nature of reality.

Filed under:

Colchester
United Kingdom