a list of happy things from just this week!

i want to balance out this blog now since the last thing i wrote is kind of bleak. it's powerful enough to me that i'm going to leave it up but that's why i'm here trying to tap dance my way out of despair now, so i'm putting together a list of happy things to counteract my sad post:

1. good writing: clearly and most obviously i love books and writing or that wouldn't be the main subject for this blog, though clearly not the only one or i would not be making a list. good writing takes me out of my head, quite often full of unproductive worries, and sadnesses, and for that power i am entirely grateful to many writers living and dead.
   
2. buying a new book: i bought one yesterday with a gift certificate i still had from my birthday. it is a deep and abiding joy for me to buy books. i love putting them in piles and running my hands over their spines, and beating the crap out of them as i absorb them though i am sad if they start to buckle under. i don't really much care if they are new, or used, and sometimes i barely register the cover because i'm seeking out a writer i have heard of, either from friends or goodreads or from other books. i don't doubt anybody will be surprised when i say that it was an richard brautigan omnibus i bought: collected revenge of the lawn which i am already reading, the abortion: an historical romance, and so the wind won't blow it all away. yes, i am going through a richard brautigan phase. i'm reading other books at the same time though: a town like alice by nevil shute, and i've just finished steve niles and elman brown's graphic novel adaptation of i am legend -- a review is forthcoming. watch this space!
   
3. unexpected meetings with good friends: my friend jacquie was getting her hair cut in my neighbourhood yesterday. she had let me know that, but seeing her and partner-in-crime jenn standing in my parking lot still put a big smile on my face. i walked over with them to the salon, and then went out to the movies. when i was on my way back, i found the two of them standing under an awning in the rain. how lovely to be surprised by them twice.
4. movies: quite similar to number one except i'm more tolerant of schlock in films than i am in books. i took great pleasure in showing two very lovely friends the miracle that is "they live" earlier this week after jessica told me stuff about kate beaton who we all think is really neat.. david said, i've always heard that line "i'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, but i'm all out of bubblegum" and i was happy i could share with them the original tacky moment. i've glanced at the book the warriors that hexter is reading and none of the characters seem to be the same and i suspect there was very little of the book actually adapted to the screen beyond the idea of street gangs journeying through new york, trying to find their way home. i have always loved that this source material for the warriors was xenophon's anabasis, which relates the journey of spartans out of enemy territory. thalatta! thalatta! has also inspired other writers but it kind of makes me laugh that it's probably the only literary thing about the warriors. and then of course i finally saw up yesterday which, even though it made me cry, it made me happy too.
   
5. packages that arrive in the mail: i got a present from a friend named jen in texas today. she is lovely, and the package came at just the right time. she had hoped it would arrive earlier this week but sometimes packages don't arrive until you need them. and i really needed that one. it was entirely thoughtful and sweet, and bacon-inspired, and you can never go wrong with that.
   

so there's my list. i'm sure if i thought harder i could find more happy things that happened to me but to be honest, i don't think i'd feel very happy doing that. right now the sun is pouring through the windows in my living room, and i'm going to go out onto the balcony and listen to the birds and look at my trees and not think for a bit. :)

meteors, part I -- richard brautigan, revenge of the lawn

i like transcribing good pieces of writing. sometimes i devote myself with a vengeance and crib whole sections of books: i did all of rolfe humphries' translation of the myth of tereus, philomela, and procne sometime ago because reading it didn't seem to be enough. i'd read it so many times, echoing the words in my mind as my eyes flashed over the words; i had read them aloud too, savouring two words, "in vain", that came after poor philomela's tongue struggled toward her, desperate to regain its seat, and then subsided forever. typing them out gave me a different connection to them because i was inputting them and transmitting them out, saying here! look! this is so compelling that i can't look away but now here it is for all of us to look at! a pleasure akin to having somebody read aloud to you companionably.

in that spirit, i thought i would start a recurring, possibly litigious (i'll have to refresh my mind on free usage) section on my blog where i transcribe sections of writing that i think goes beyond the pale into something vivid and visceral, writing that i admire, that showed me truth or beauty or humour. i guess i also could have called this section in the raw -- i'm sure you'll see through my tastes after a few of these. but it's called meteors to maintain my space theme. reading short passages is like watching shooting stars anyway: a startled moment of recognition.

this first entry is a quickie from richard brautigan's collection of short stories revenge of the lawn, a story called pacific radio fire. as i read the book i may add to this entry, but in the meantime i think this is fine:

His eyes were wounded wet rugs.

Like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner I tried to console him. I recited the same old litanies that you say to people when you try to help their broken hearts, but words can't help at all.

It's just the sound of another human voice that makes the only difference. There's nothing you're ever going to say that's going to make anybody happy when they're feeling shitty about losing somebody that they love.

Finally he set fire to the radio. He piled some paper around it. He struck a match to the paper. We sat there watching it. I had never seen anybody set fire to a radio before.

for the record, i did a quick google image search for "radio on fire", went through five pages of results before i gave up...

update: look at what my friend craig battle found! i guess i was looking in the wrong place:

i just read the hawkline monster and i loved it so much i'm gonna have to blog about it. have you all read it? if you haven't, get on it! :)

i read the hawkline monster the other day, and i'm still wrapped in it, like a dream. i can't shake it even as i read other books.

you have to read it. i was lucky enough to stumble upon it in the bookstore literally around the corner from my apartment, and for four dollars. original cover price was a buck seventy-five but i would pay a LOT MORE for this book. maybe 10,000 dollars. but i'm glad i got it for four. :)

i just finished a jim thompson but i really just want to read it again. i'm writing a blog entry about it now. :)

p.s. i am tempted to cobble together my blog entry from these paroxysms of pleasure i keep posting on the internet about the hawkline monster. :P

*******

and i did. at least all that stuff up there i have blabbed onto the internet. there was more but since it was a conversation and not really my writing, i'll write about it here, as these ejaculations are hardly sufficient in communicating my delight in this book. even now, i would rather be reading it than writing this. it is helping me to understand what kind of prose i love to read more than any other book to be able to name it. to say, "read the hawkline monster by richard brautigan, and you will know prose i love"; it's a gift.

the gift is actually from a friend, ben loory. he's just finished his own book, stories for nighttime and some for the day, and i decided to read the hawkline monster because we were discussing his influences. i'll say here and now that i love his book -- i've had the privelege of reading it in advance of publication, and it's only in reading someone like brautigan do i begin to understand why. they both give story as essence, a terse dream that is the opposite of jane austen's two inches of etched ivory. they etch their lines purposely as she did, and bring it lyricism, brautigan with his metaphors, and loory with his metre. but austen's world, while beautiful in its own way, is a small one, and constrained and her analogy points to the limited sphere of her world i see as a woodcut, deeply ingrained, whereas the simplicity of the approach these men use is rather different for me. the effect in my mind is this: the spare words become a paint brush that with three wide strokes paint in watercolour a world that becomes more vivid and real every moment i stare at the canvas.

even now, as i write this, still i want to be reading the hawkline monster again. i'm distracted by a pain below my shoulder blade, and i know i should probably eat something because those honey nut cheerios were a long time ago, but i also know i should try at least to exorcise this need to be with this book, stop thinking about greer and cameron, the laconic heroes that have so bewitched me, and have me constantly in conflict as to whom i love the better. i miss the shadow, the honourable shadow. i miss the stark pleasure that this book gave me when i was reading it, which by the way, i could not do straight through. i would stop and absorb my feelings about the story, about the characters and how alive they were to me.

i am enamoured with the distillate of story, which raymond chandler thought was just the starting point but which i am convinced is a reward in its' own right. brautigan and loory have made me sure.