Writing (January)

Photograph of Mirka Mora invitation words at Heide Gallery, taken by Carol O'Connor

 

In her books of memoirs Mirka Mora writes somewhat like Gertrude Stein. Not the Gertrude of ‘Tender Buttons’, Mirka’s sculptures are her tender buttons, but the Gertrude of ‘Paris France’ and ‘Wars I Have Seen’. Mirka lived in the same Paris described by Gertrude in those books, a style that adopts a child-like appreciation of everyday people and things, now those people and things could be taken away overnight by brute force. Mirka’s handwriting is decent copperplate. Her months are clear, starting with lucid January. Gertrude’s are not lucid. She goes out of her way to make her handwriting unreadable.