I first read Flusser on a beach in the tropics. When I reread The Philosophy of Design now, I remember the blazing sun (it was winter), the pink beach (ours; it was deserted), the green sea whose waves rose up like the glass side of an aquarium. Parrot fish could be seen as though in aspic. R.M. and I would drink Canada Dry ginger ale, going back and forth to the fridge in the condo.
I read parts of the book to R.M. who was unimpressed. She was reading Proust and had no time for philosophy, she said, on the island where she was born. Later, walking through Hyde Park we came to a gallery, the Serpentine, in whose bookshop R.M. claimed to see the new volume of Flusser before I did. She had no money but wanted the book; I bought it, pointing out she had no time for Flusser when we were in the tropics. But we were no longer in the tropics, she said.
Ever since, R.M. does not like to hear Flusser’s name, but I did not feel as mean buying the book she wanted and thought she had seen first as a few weeks later when, visiting me, she found a hardbound creamy notebook covered in butterflies. R.M. was poor once again, and I bought the book which she had seen first for myself. I stood in on the bookshelf in the office where we could both admire it. But then I thought: ‘this is wrong – R.M. saw it first’ and offered it to her. She gave it back: you didn’t do it from love, she said, and she was right.
A week later, I sent the butterfly covered notebook south to R.M. Use it in your insurance exams, I wrote in the dedication. Would it make up for the Flusser? Was it a gift of love? Remembering the winter’s day when, in Hyde Park, we sat on the deckchairs they put up by the lake (the same day I bought Flusser) I thought: all of this day was distilled into the butterfly notebook.
Alas, the package which contained the notebook never reached R.M. Was it stolen? Today, the same day as the package I sent to R.M. proved irretrievable, I received The Fall’s Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004. Was this the butterfly notebook born again? But R.M. does not like The Fall, so I can’t send her this as a gift of love. The Flusser book is covered in annotations. So what can I send?
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