a brief disjointed return.

a news story:
now that i am having schooling in writing again, i will have more to write and put in here.
the bad part, requiring discipline in order to write is probably a good sign for my imminent failure as a writer.

i would like to take a moment and chat about some super books i read recently, as well as a couple of the mediocre ones i picked up for some reason and decided to finish.

first, my favorite of recent days and the reason i feel inspired all month:
We Love Glenda So Much, a short story collection by Julio Cortazar.
part of my joy for this collection is that i have been trying to know Cortazar for a good 6 months or so and after feeling stupid trying his novels and losing my brain, i'm glad to have finally hit upon his work in my favorite medium, short story. Cortazar has such a crazy mind, i wish i could live in it, but being that i can't, i consider it a joy to read such lovely passages as this:

"The dogs howled again intermittently, from one of the shacks in the dell the shouts of a woman suddenly cut off at their highest point, the silence next door let a murmer of confused alarm pass in the dozing of tourist women too fatigued and out of it to be really interested in what surrounded them. We stayed listening, far removed from sleep. After all, what's the use of sleeping if later on it could be the roar of a cloudburst on the roof or the shrill lovemaking of cats, the preludes to nightmares, dawn, when heads finally flatten pillows and then nothing can get in them until the sun climbs up the palm trees and you have to go back to living."
--Story With Spiders

doesn't it make you want to sigh? i read it and want my own beach cabin or else make myself lie awake in bed to hear my own neighborhood's sounds, the next-door air conditioner and a bird with a very close nest. i realize that real criticism is beyond me, that reading for me is either loving or confusion or boredom or amusement. i usually can't be bothered thinking of where an author failed or what he must have been thinking. what i read is mostly enough.

other highlighted stories include the title story, We Love Glenda So Much, a tale of fan clubs gone awry but told in a sense of the highest glory and ancient quest for perfection; Clone, a confusing fugue or choir of sorts where i can't even get angry that the concept is greater than the plot; and Stories I Tell Myself, which i of course love because dream and daydream and love and adventure roll all together and come out in a dinner party.

ok, end of good book round 1. good book round 2 will be shorter because allison is borrowing my copy and i desperately want it back for comfort.

like so many of my college brethren, i have caught the kerouac bug. however unlike most i have known, it was not On The Road that made me realize my inner beat (or rather name my inner beat as 'beat' because i feel like i'm insulting myself to say i needed a book to tell me what i am. at any rate). so, my book of choice: Desolation Angels.

those of you who feel like scrolling down a bit will find a post where i basically rhapsodize about a passage from this book, and i guess not a lot more needs to be said. there is a blurb on the cover of my copy that talks about how Desolation Angels best captures the place of God in the beat mystique, and i like that. i worry and wonder about God a lot and its easier to think about when presented in such a poetic and honest way as this. i think maybe its too late, too much writing has happened since then to make it acceptable for me to write the way i do, but kerouac tells me its okay to do stream of consciousness if i want even if its not a stream but a lot of blood squirting out instead.

i guess rather than move on to the mediocre books i should just give a rest, i'm getting crazy and i'm not all that deep anyway. there is only so long i can ramble along in my own head without making you all hate me, probably. and i do still care, somewhat, about that.

good night.