Robinson Crusoe

Dude...this is Rob.....(when you've known Robinson Crusoe as long as I have...you get to call him Rob). Dig it!

-Friday

On a Libary Shelf one Afternoon

So, I'm sitting here in the library, just glancing at the rows upon rows of dusty books, wondering to myself, Just who was the last person to pick one up? What was he like, was he picking them up out of genuine interest, or just a moment's curiousity?

Who knows? But I just can't help thinking about it, just like I can't stop from putting my pencil down, ignoring my past due homework, and running my fingers over their heavy, fragile covers. And my thoughts begin to drift to different things, like how much more time will they be here? These printed words, do even they have an expiration date? We tend to think of printed material as a form of immortalization, but, if truth be told, aren't books also subject to being chucked away and lost in the passage of time?

Now, I know that some books live on, singing their songs for the rest of eternity (if the human race lasts that long that is). The lists are long of the books that will live on, just as the list of men that will live on through the testaments of time. But are there books that will entertain us for a brief time, then slide away, deeper and deeper into oblivion, till the point where all of the ideas and words it held are just as if they'd never been written?

As I sit in this deserted libary corner, musing over these old, dusty volumes, I realize just how similar books are to people. Just how we all wish we could break out into something special, something everlastingly endearing that will never fade away. But reality doesn't give out mercy cards, oh no, reality just coldly walks past us with its head held up high, not even nodding to acknowledge our existence.

-You hear that, books, we're not so different, you and I.

But all I get back for a response is their persistent silence. I guess they've accepted their new niches in life, space fillers in an enormous library. For if we take away all of the non-great books, what would we have? Open, vacant libraries?

So I just shrug, I shake off the feeling that I'm just here to take up space and keep the world from looking too empty. I just pick up my pencil and resume my past due homework.

Superpower

I’m sometimes scared of what I have the power to destroy;

Peering at the porcelains that surround me, follow me;

It astounds me to think that they’ve even survived this long;

You see, it’s because of this super power

Oh what a super power, you're probably familiar with it;

No, I can’t leap over buildings in one bound,

My power knows no limit for leaping

I can’t breathe underwater;

But have an uncanny ability to make people feel suffocated;

I don’t have penetrating x-ray vision, but really;

Who wants to see through walls when you can pierce into others;

And peel away their securities like a careful surgeon until;

All that’s left are soft, tender, and vulnerable fears.

If I could stop there, I would be happy, I could move on;

But I don’t, I can’t, and it’s this super power, this curse;

Which doesn’t allow me let go once I smell blood;

The power kicks in, and I’m in autopilot,

I kick and scratch and yell, and don’t stop, I can’t stop;

Not until what’s left before me are just shards of what once was.

Oh what a power…what a power…

Where to begin

So the main objective of this blog had been to write about and critique novels that I had read. As anyone who's followed it for a while can tell, I've severely digressed. So, I'm going to make an effort to get back to the essence of this blog, to discuss two novels that I recently read. I will simply use my recollection of the novels and their content, instead of actually just stepping over to my book case and flipping to the passage of interest (sorry, I've been cursed with this adamant and zealous lethargy) To start with I'll discuss my thoughts and impressions (i'm very impressionable, mind you) about Richard Yates Revolutionary Road and then proceed to Dick's Ubik, and possibly conclude (if my lethargy permits) with some thoughts on the new film Juno.

Revolutonary RD

The story of the dysfunctional suburban family in an oddly overwhelming normal setting. This novel spoke out to me more than most in a long time. The themes that are brought up, turned over and examined, are full of impact. The love, the true love, between two people, and what that includes. The choices we make in life and how we stagnate in them, afraid to even reach out for something better. The oppressive qualities of a society obsessed with tidiness, mediocrity, and normalcy. It becomes too much for the main characters to take, forcing them into stinking lashes that hurt each other and themselves only to...to what? Scream passionately that we are not like "those next door," we have a life, a passion, an intelligence which they can not possibly possess. oh what a tortuous mentality. oh the pain of reality when we realize that mistakes of our own life are due in most part to our own self deception, our own suffocating need to hope that, if we only wanted to, we could always do better.

There was so much self delusion in this novel, and yet, it was so richly human, it cut deep when the reader realized, how far am I from being like the husband (or the wife)? ....not that far.

I can't really continue to the next novel, let's just leave it at this for now, the lethargy has won yet another bout. Damn you, laziness, damn you.

Circus Act

Come one, come all,

To the greatest show around.

Bring everyone that can be found,

For this show is sure to enthrall.

Feast your eyes on that cannon,

Inside’s a man, like you, like me,

Yet-and here’s the kicker-he does not see.

In all ideas pure, and of instincts none.

Prepare yourselves, do not be startled,

he was chosen by the role of dice,

to be shot out of our most impressive device,

Initially, everything’s surely to get rattled.

KABOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At first everything was loud, rasping, and dark

I heard inside me a primitive wailing and screaming,

But when I finally opened my eyes, I saw before me streaming,

All of the earth, cold and stark.

I wept for a hand, a gesture, a sign

To indicate why I was placed in this odd journey,

With a trajectory I couldn’t follow, I flew calmly over many,

Many others, all following directions without design.

I tried to reason what it could all be about,

That I was put there to fly, to perchance feel absolute free will,

But my inability to land-despite my great desire-made that idea spill,

Into broken vessels, leaving me with nothing but the urge to shout.

If not that then what?-Was I marked to be with the doomed?

The inevitable death waiting for me at the end of my gentle flight,

Is that all I have to look forward to?-is there no way to fight?

I strain my eyes to see what- if anything-ahead loomed.

I build, erect, and conjure elaborate endings,

Outcomes which console and assuage my fear,

But it’s an illusory comfort, pushing my smile into a sardonic smear,

For I sense an arbitrariness, a triviality in my own flight’s tidings.

Yet, I cannot relinquish that hope, that expectation,

Of life, of survival, of a safe descent onto soft, embracing fields,

For I see it approaching, marking the end of my trip and all that that yields,

I close my eyes in the face of such an uncertain culmination.

Claustrophobia

I see the sun's soft, golden light,
It caresses everything in sight
I move around, feeling my blood course,
And then there's no end and no source
I'm too expansive, too alive,
I breathe deep, readying myself for the dive,
And then i release...such a perfect sensation,
I exalt in my own edification.

And to step away from this?
To push my own head under some dark abyss?
Where has that feeling of freedom gone?

I get pushed deeper like some pawn,
All I want to do is emerge
And explode out of the waters in a surge,
To see for myself, just once more,
That the sun hasn't left us forevermore

Slurp up the literary wealth like Angel Haired Spaghetti

"I used to dig in the garden, and there is nothing fantastic or
ultradimensional about crab grass... unless you are an sf (science
fiction) writer, in which case you are viewing crab grass with
suspicion. What are its real motives? And who sent it in the first
place?" Philip K Dick, We can remember it for you wholesale, Notes,
1987, Orion.

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in
this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's
around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge
of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if
they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they
don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd
just be the catcher in the rye, and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

-Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
-For Esme, with love and Squalor, J.D. Salinger

"I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions".
-Teddy, J.D. Salinger

But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique,
the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which
the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again.
That is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration.
-Demian, Hermann Hesse

I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been
and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.
-Demian, Hermann Hesse

"I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't."
-The Stranger, Albert Camus

"And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?"
-Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when
he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not
understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the
veshches [things] I had done...and I would not be able to really stop
him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world.

-Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess


This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.
-East of Eden, John Steinbeck