For the cosmos to bore us (original) (raw)

In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin writes of 'the deepest connection between weather and boredom.' How strange, he thinks, for the cosmos to bore us. For Benjamin, boredom can be a desirable state, a haven for the dream bird, as we learn in his essay on the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov, 'The Storyteller.' But we also know from the same essay that the slightest rustling of leaves can drive the dream bird away: and we know from experience that changes in the weather often produce disturbances — to our thinking, and to our daily activities. In The Arcades Project, minor characters are always acting in terms of the weather, ducking in from the streets of Paris to avoid getting wet by taking refuge in the arcades. Or, more dramatically, there is the story Benjamin tells of the Englishman who wakes up and, enraged by the weather, shoots himself. In this collection of vignettes inspired by Benjamin, I show how the weather works as a force — particularly in Vancouver, the rainy city where I live — by shaping or providing the opportunity for actions like: dreaming, kissing, shopping, thinking, and writing.