the stuff of Paul Auster novels

I was going through some things the other day, and came across this scrap of paper that I found on Stepney Green tube platform a few years ago.

It appears to be part of a home-made dictionary or language-learning tool (there are some scribbles down the side in a script I don't recognise). I don't think a Wittgenstein or Benjamin could do more to capture the magic and sadness of individual words. Most movingly of all, I had by chance stumbled upon the page of words beginning 'in', making up a list of the various traits that can be lacking in life, some blurred by puddles from the platform. A fragment in every sense.   

Comments

[ian]

...and I thought I hoarded stuff.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibanda/92185535/