12/06

A world that looked and felt so familiar supervened upon by new circumstances that rendered it illegible, lowered the sky onto his head, made the air heavy and sombre; getting on so poorly in the mess, Bryan finally decided to take a holiday. The thought occurred to him at dinner one night like a bolt from the blue, benumbed as his mind had been by all that had transpired. Afterwards it seemed so blatantly obvious, since he was wallowing inertly in money and time and unease, and soon it became impossible for him to think about anything else.
At the beginning of June Bryan flew to Barcelona via Singapore, where he had listened to a female concert pianist dole out Billy Joel covers in the terminal lounge between connections. While listening he contemplated a likeness between the pianist and himself as human beings who had devoted a lifetime to a passion whose riches weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Grading papers, Billy Joel covers, the underhandedness of academics, audiences forever in flight. But, literary criticism being no art form, it couldn’t possibly stand together with music in that analogy, since in music the very act was the ultimate reward. He left Changi in a philosophical mood. From El Prat he boarded a light aircraft that shook rabidly in the wind. It took him as far as Formentera, a tiny sliver of an island in the famous Balearic archipelago. Except for a conference in Wellington some years back, Bryan had never left Australia.