A package arrives in the mail for Ariadne, a week after they encounter one another in a bookshop in Paris. There is no return address, though the package itself is postmarked Beijing, China. Inside the box there is a small book wrapped in brown butcher paper and twine. Ariadne should be able to recognize it fairly quickly; even the smell of it still recalls that day and the bookstore where Arthur had purchased it. On top of the book there is an envelope -- fine linen paper of the palest eggshell color; inside the envelope there is a notecard complete with note in small, tight handwriting.
It reads:
I first read Donne on my twenty sixth birthday. Figured you would appreciate the early start. Enjoy.
[ It's ten in the evening in Beijing, early afternoon in France, when Arthur receives an encrypted message from a number he simply has listed as "A" in his phone. He pauses from pouring over old newspaper articles to open it, then consider it, then send a reply. ]
Leave it to you to turn Donne on his head and inside out.
[ The rather quickly cobbled anti-perspective sits in the corner-cradle of a window, Ariadne with her legs folded under her as she stares at it from her perch on the couch arm, trying to decide how she would approach it with another medium. When Arthur's text comes through she blinks, as if breaking out of a trance and reaches over for her phone, smiling at what she sees there. ]
He started it. I thought I would return the favor.
[ Which is to say she still only half-gets what she's reading, and more often than not finds new meanings upon every reread, which she can't quite decide on being more vexing or satisfying. ]
[ Poetry isn't something that Arthur inherently likes per say, though he has cultivated something of an appreciation for it over the years. It's that ambiguity in language that keeps him from fully enjoying it, the way the words manage to mean one thing in a certain slant of light only to reveal themselves to mean something entirely different when read with different pauses or phrasing. But there is something to be said about the way a poem reveals itself, much like the way Cobb taught Arthur the dreamspace can be 'discovered' by an Architect. ]
I know I'll never look at a compass the same way again. How's Paris?
Parisian. It's also cloudy but the sky's so blue it looks fake.
[ She peers out her window now, stepping toward it, the palm of her hand catching on the wooden ledge with a slight press. A glance backward reveals the book on her coffee table amidst scattered notes and half-thought sketches. On the corner of that same table, the note slants across the wood.
Her second text is sent quite on the heels of her first. ]
Comments 45
It reads:
I first read Donne on my twenty sixth birthday. Figured you would appreciate the early start. Enjoy.
-A.
Reply
Leave it to you to turn Donne on his head and inside out.
Reply
He started it. I thought I would return the favor.
[ Which is to say she still only half-gets what she's reading, and more often than not finds new meanings upon every reread, which she can't quite decide on being more vexing or satisfying. ]
Reply
I know I'll never look at a compass the same way again. How's Paris?
Reply
Parisian. It's also cloudy but the sky's so blue it looks fake.
[ She peers out her window now, stepping toward it, the palm of her hand catching on the wooden ledge with a slight press. A glance backward reveals the book on her coffee table amidst scattered notes and half-thought sketches. On the corner of that same table, the note slants across the wood.
Her second text is sent quite on the heels of her first. ]
Where are you? How are things?
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