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,
1 Comments:
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At 7:25 AM,
Daffodils in Pyjamas said...
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haha!
honestly i was shocked to see the tick 'Updated!' by your name from my blog :)
