a good book on a rainy day
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
just a brief respite from work: i have been threatened by 'the bossing' last thursday to write in my blog again. i posted a couple of entries done a few weeks back that are now ripe for the taking.
my hands shudder as i type on my keyboard. (hehehe...)
*****
one of my favorite authors is tom robbins (no, i did not misspell that for tim robbins, the actor). he writes fiction like no other writer can; conjuring unexpected metaphors & similies and producing the most unlikely of stories. but he is not for the faint-hearted as so many times he will bring down all your sacred cows. one of my favorite stories of all time, 'jitterbug perfume' tells of a present-day janitor (age unkown but was born during the medieval times) in search of his lover, who was lost on the astral plane, or something to that effect. and at the center of it is a missing blue bottle and all this will all reach to a conclusion at 2100 paris time.
i'm currently reading a book of his called 'half asleep in frog pajamas'. as robbins lives in seattle, he can conjure the most brilliant images for rain. this would be a good book on this rainy day. here's a sample of what he can do:
'as for the rain, it manifests all of aloha's ambiguity (in each hello an implied goodbye) and then some. rain is protective in ways that the seemingly more affectionate sunshine can never match. it dims the monster's glare, dampens the dragon's fire. but like pockets of a drowned sailor, it can conceal disintegrating packets of forbidden opiates and any number of rusty knives.
'like a rice farmer in an uside-down paddy, you stand amidst the self-harvesting stalks of rain. this as chopsticks and chopsticks straight, greenish-gray as the strings of the ocean's zither, the stalks hang from the clouds by their roots and shake free their bursting grains. the rice bowls of your collar is soon overflowing. when you hunch your shoulders, they make rain sushi.'
*****
this is why i read: to live in the writer's dreams, ever present and utterly believeable.
posted by lex @ 6:13 PM,
the world is our playground and we will always be home
Sunday, May 07, 2006
'we become divine after every pain
so please, won't you sit through
because everyday
will find reasons to stay
if words are too few
to keep horizons in view
will you go or stay or grow
standing on the edge
between crazy and sense
remember what i said'
- 'the world is our playground and we will always be home', up dharma down
i am an escapist. if there is one part of me that i will always find threatening, it is this. it's one of my greatest security blankets or as psychologists would call it, defense mechanisms. when things, work or relationships start to hurt, i move away, slowly or as fast as i can. it doesn't matter what speed i'm in, as long as i move away. it's instinct. honey once told me that it's ingrained in the male circuitry.
but for the past couple of years, i have been very mindful of my decisions. i left when i knew i needed to leave (not wanted) and stayed when i knew i still had room to grow from these experiences. this year alone, there have been a lot of trials. i wouldn't mention it anymore but i refused to succumb to being houdini.
it is so easy to fall into old habits but we as human beings need to realize that there is always more to it. that life is a dialectic of both freedom and responsibility. and if we choose to do so, the world will indeed become our playground and we will always be home.
posted by lex @ 9:43 AM,
