Words

Hey man I think I had like 1200 or so. So that's good. But I'm Nabokov obsessed at the moment. You, my man Steve, are in so many ways my better. You had a wonderful image in a post below that involved your head below water in a tub listening to the metallic ringing sounds. Great image.

Now I give you a bad paraphrasing of Nabokov, because I'm too lazy to go downstairs and get the book:

"His cigarette, with its excrescence of ash, reminded him of lichened firs through which shone a dull sunset."

Read a line like that (though he said it better) and I'm the hillbilly who can only express himself by dancing up and down and beating his straw hat against his leg.

And yet Nabokov's imagery is never gratuitous. Because it so happens that the character looking at his cigarette is a Russian exile. And he's thinking, always thinking of his home country but this loneliness has not yet penetrated his consciousness. So Nabokov uses images associated with Russia until the character's ardor finally bursts through (to tragic effect) into conscious thought.