Почему я не умею писать рассказов...
Одно из замечательных открытий этого года - Alice Munro (спасибо, i_shmael@lj).

Читаю сейчас её толстенную книгу, которая начинается с её собственного предисловия - о том, как она стала писать по-настоящему, как вместо детских выдуманных историй про индейцев, приключения и выдуманные страны появились рассказы.

Ей было лет 15, она стояла у окна в библиотеке и смотрела в окно на падающий снег.

"Snow was falling straight down, in the gentle meditative way that it often seemed to fall in town, between the buildings. That didn't mean that once I left shelter of town, on my westward walk home, I would not be facing onto a whirlwind of snow whipped off the tops of the drifts, or a primal blast coming across Lake Huron and Lake Michigan right out of the freezing heart of the continent.

Snow falling straight down. The window looked out on the Town weigh-scales and a high board fence beyond. A corner of the Town Armouries came into view. Like all armouries, it was thick-walled scowling building of red brick.

A team of horses, pulling a sleigh, was moving onto the scales. The sleigh was piled high with sacks of grain. The man who was driving the team had a winter cap pulled down on his head, fur-lined flaps over his ears. The horses were heavy workhorses, still used then on some farms. In a few years such horses would have vanished. The farmer would be taking the grain to the chopping mill. He would get a slip from the scale operator stating the total weight. The net weight would be arrived at by substracting the weight of the empty sleigh. There was some mud tracked onto the snow around the scales, a scattering of hay and grain from other loads, and a fresh mound of horse manure on which the snow immediately melted.

This description makes the scene seem as if it was waiting to be painted and hung on the wall to be admired by somebody who has probably never bagged grain. The patient horses with their nobly rounded rumps, the humped figure of the driver, the coarse fabric of the sacks. The snow conferring dignity and peace".

...

Я читала это и наслаждалась, и видела девочку у окна, и как начинает темнеть, как сгущаются сумерки, и падает снег, и одиночество этой минуты, - капсула, из которой смотришь в окно, и тишина, в которой падает снег, и будущая память об этой минуте, и бесшумное скользящее время. И завидовала тому, что Alice Munro вот так об этом написала...

Но дальше в том же абзаце следующая фраза перевернула моё восприятие.

"I didn't see it framed and removed in that way. I saw it alive and potent, and it gave me something like a blow to the chest. What does this mean, what can be discovered about it, what is the rest of the story? The man and the horses are not symbolic or picturesque, they are moving through a story which is hidden, and now, for a moment, careleslsly revealed.

How can you get your finger on it, feel this beating?"

А для меня дальнейшей истории нет, она всегда только за кадром, для меня всегда - пришпиленное мгновенье, отдельные выхваченные кадры, шевелящиеся губы, а слов не слышно, быстрый взгляд в чужое окно...