#59

Before I got sick, I saw a red-tailed hawk do some magnificent flying. She lit from the top of a municipal light to  cross a road and wing her way powerfully across an empty soccer field over to the treeline by the river. She was a strong, built, stocky bird, well-made for self-directed, energetic flight. She engaged in a great deal of exuberant altitude-play once across the river before deigning to perch. Clearly, some birds have seasons in their prime wherein the lean season and the easy pickings blur together. The tightening days trouble them not at all. I'm watching some fat robins make mock of the snowy day we're having right now, in fact. They look like chubby little frat boys screwing around together.

*

Putting books on a wall is a lot like putting maps on a wall. I used to have both, but I lost all my maps. I love cartography. Basically I love data points arranged in space, in whatever dimensionality or variety of such you please. Finally, the feeling of being surrounded by connections both unintentional and personal, by literal battlements of psychic power, is a very potent defensive barrier. I cannot recommend it enough. 

I don't have any shelves right now. I have instead arranged great stacks, mostly against walls, a few freestanding, all around the walls of my room. It's a mess, but even in this chaos there are little jokes and coincidences to ponder. For example, I see a series of books that was important to an ex of mine and their sibling just beneath a copy of Civilization and Its Discontents that their mother gave to me as a gift--unintentional, but a nice little twinge. Freud would heartily approve, which carries the whole thing into the realm of the truly disgusting.

Gender Trouble is right over Peter Pan. Amusing. Would that I had any Alison Bechdel to add to the mix; alas, Ulysses is across the room--atop You Can't Go Home Again. Who seethes the more? Ugh. I miss my maps. Ah, well, but they were maps of Middle-Earth anyway. Who the hell am I kidding.

Too many books, folks. Too much bullshit. 

I know a dude, a mechanic works out of a garage in a Citgo station, who once a few years back asked me why the fuck I was reading. Since I was on the clock and delivering him auto parts, I told him I didn't get paid enough not to read a few minutes every stop. 

"No, motherfucker, I'm  talking about why the fuck do you even do that. Read books. All that bullshit. It's all fucking lies."
"Well, lies are kind of the point, with fiction--"
"All of it, motherfucker! I mean all of it! Don't even talk to me about fiction, I mean every book is just lies, history, religion, social shit, all that fuckin bullshit. My fuckin wife, she's always reading books, listening to the news, and now she's full of fucking bullshit. Making her waste her fuckin time thinking about problems that have nothing to do with fuckin anything. Lies!"

At this point I put the book down and leaned forward, interested. "Hold up, man. Are you saying you don't read anything? Like, no books ever, no magazines, no news, because it is all of it nothing but lies? What the fuck do you think is true, man?"

He smiled and waved his hand to show he'd been hot-airin' a little, but dragged his cig and bore down on his point. "Almost all lies, almost, fucking bullshit anyway, news, definitely lies, history, so much lies--listen, the real thing is business, every day. Work. Fuckin money. This shit right here, bitch. Fucking books just fill your head with bullshit, bullshit keeps you from making money. You're a smart motherfucker, you don't need to be reading no books."

Many pleasant arguments with him as we whiled away the cigarettes, neither of us much shifting our positions. Yet, given time and the reading of a lot more books, I find I have become more warmed to his viewpoint than I would have ever believed possible.

Hey, have you read my now-in-paperback lies?


--JL