I read The Road this week. It was biblically enchanting. It took me to a new level of silent tears.
The Road forced a seismic shift in my soul. I embraced its moving, passionate prose.
So I decided to follow it up with something light.
Hence Drinking, Smoking and Screwing.
Mistake.
Great anthology, but kind of erased The Road from my map.
I highly recommend Drinking, Smoking and Screwing.
Oz.
Hot damn.
You know that urban myth about the Wizard of Oz synching well with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon?
I’ve tried it a few times and either feigned or lost interest.
Or smoked too much.
Or did too many dishes.
Or spent too many hours working.
Or preoccupied myself with other equally worthy endeavors.
But it’s true as the YouTube sky is blue (insert following colors via region: apocalypse ash for NYC, bamboo green for Florida, or gleaming turquoise bursting blue for Arizona.)
The movie and music and lyrics indeed align and abide. It’s pretty fucking trippy.
I should get a job naming paint colors. I’m good at spotting apocalypse ash. (I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy this week, so I am now an official authority on the color and the issue that it supports. I won't mention that I had some strange welling in my eyes as the pages passed into the final words, for I was on a train with about 800 people as said comments ensued.)
Guard you and your loved ones against the torrents of thunder, tornados, and savages my friends. (Them's code words for getting a working wine cellar...shhhhh, said he in a twisted tango Texas whisper.)
One might catch you and your loved ones unprepared, then sweep and swirl you into a fractalling Fibonacci funnel on the night of a misty crescent moon. (Was last night's crescent, lowering in the western fog, humbled overhead by the beaming Orion, not a pleasure for the eye?)
Like that cow in Twister.
Or, obviously, Dorothy.
Hello...nostalgia bin
This is the most awesome relic I've ever recovered from the 80's.
The MTV Lionel Ritchie head made by the blind girl over the course of the raising-the-bar-of-emotional-contemplation Lionel Ritchie video, Hello.
I won't even visit the idea of sensing Lionel Ritchie while one is blind or deaf. He was a force unrettiment in the powerful thrust of that decadent decade.
The genius that was he also introduced a new theory of gravity (Dancing on a Ceiling.)
I want one of these on my mantel.
I think, also, that it would be a fantastic vehicle for a mega-selling pencil sharpener that doubles as a conversation starter.
This is my new Wii/X-Box 360 character.
Or a creepy puppet.
We all move uneasily within our restraints. Be they handcuffs or asteroids.
Trust me. (I've been restrained).
No matter how boundless they are.
KRJ
This is not a passing entry. This is deeply meaningful.
Mole, blind as he was, had been away from his underground home for a very long time, exploring a world of light and adventure with his friend Ratty. One winter’s evening…they explored away from home for a rodent’s eternity…
Mole is walking along with Ratty and suddenly, powerfully, with “recollection in the fullest flood” smells his own home.
“Please stop Ratty!” pleaded poor Mole, in a sudden and powerful tearing anguish of heart. “You don’t understand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it, I must, I must! O, come back, Ratty! Please come back!”
I get sad when I read this passage.
Thanks to KRJ for the memory.
Reading An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison.
Again.
First time, many moons ago, it hit me like a thorazine bottle -- made out of lithium salt (if you're a chemist, look it up on the Periodic Table) -- in the forehead.
Now, not so much. Which of course means more than ever.
But it does kind of make me go from being disgruntled to gruntled. It’s good to be unstigmatized and feel not-so-singled out. It’s another thing completely to be categorized so distinctly and articulately. Especially after being so uncategorazible and given a wide latitude to emote for the past moons so many.
I’m trying to figure out how to take a grad course in creative writing. Is Iowa out of the question? I read their admissions policy today. I’m a day late for entry submission. Guess it’s time to go into self-imposed remission.
I wanted to embed the song New Year's Day (even cliché can be apropos) but this will do. Same band, altered sentiment.
Last year tonight was the last time I talked to Nancy. For those of you who did not know Nancy, she was not a girlfriend.
She was a gifted intellectual with a mind for money, a heart for words and a weakness for animals. Especially puppies.
We shared a lot in common. She would make me dinners and deliver them, then not leave until I ate them. Wasn't hard. She was a good cook. But even then we knew the end was coming. It was tough making small talk with a granite stone looming.
She was a friend, clear and true.
I would go to her house and refinish her furniture and she would make toys for Lefty.
We used to spend summer nights on my porch drinking beer and smoking stuff. We'd spend summer days catching sun and salt riding Jet Skis and drinking frosty things with ice at Donovan's.
Nancy died a year ago this month from breast cancer. I found out about it in a shocking manner.
