"And now to begin as if to begin . . . ."

. . .or: "to begin is more interesting than to finish."

“I am very busy finding out what people mean by what they say,” she wrote, saving the sentence.

Reading Gertrude Stein is always beginning, never wanting to finish the reading and where the reading takes the reader.

And to the question, "Why Gertrude Stein?" the only answer is "why on earth not?"

My first encounter with GS was during post-graduate studies, domiciled temporarily in a women’s studies department of a university, and as relief from academic language I encountered a number of women who were not academics i.e. professors, researchers, such purposefully institutionally oriented people, but readers, support staff, book people, and me a student and we all shared the pleasure of simply getting together to read parts of Gertrude Stein’s writing that we enjoyed. Enjoyment was the point. Accompanied by food and drink. Occasional gatherings. We did not study Gertrude, we read Gertrude, and we delighted in reading her writing out loud to each other, for as one of us said, Gertrude’s writing asks to be read aloud, and then it came to pass as usual that time passed and changes occurred and then there were no more meetings.

This is more than nostalgia, though the flavour lingers.

Now, slanting towards the writing of contemporary poets who are (mostly) women, who could be categorized as “modernist”, I find that Gertrude’s writing is referred to again and again and so I begin to read her again. These same modernist contemporary women poets are also revisiting the ideas of feminism with new insights into the use of language and again, Gertrude is among us.

For me there is the spirit of exploration of all that Gertrude wrote and how it has struck up kinship with what is being written now, and more than anything I wish for a warm place with a few chairs, shared food and drink, and others who read her writing, and talk about writing, so we can take it from there, as if we were all here, her words alive among us.

Now though the cafe is only imaginary, the meeting place a medium that is less than technically hospitable, but the conversation can still come through.

Comments more than welcome, essential indeed, wherever they lead, circular, diagonal, criss-cross, back and forth, in the chairs under the awning of the Gertrude Stein Café.