Some Things Arrived

This isn’t a thought so much as a thing that happened, I suppose…but I was really excited this week to receive a shipment of books. As you know, I’m in grad school. And as such, it’s a long road with a lot to do. To help create milestones for myself (something every ongoing project should have), I began printing each chapter of my manuscript as individual artist’s books. Of course, the chapters might be revised later on, but in the mean time I get to hold something in my hands, look at, experience and share. The count: two down, eight (ten? more?) to go.

In Books: a Refreshing Blast

Four years ago, I spent a summer in the Catskills. It was beautiful in the ways you might expect: green, warm, rain, mountains, black bears, bookbinders, art studios and good friends. While there, I happened upon a book (which I ended up stealing…but it was raggedy so really I was doing the organization a favor). The book began, If this typewriter can’t do it, then fuck it, it can’t be done. For four years I’ve been thinking about those words and wondering about the book that I didn’t even read. Then last Sunday, I heard Tom Robbins on NPR’s Wait Wait and I figured it was a sign (you know when you need the universe to point out your next book to you?). The book I, um, borrowed is Still Life with Woodpecker, written in 1980. I have this thing where I feel like I need to be on top of the latest nonfiction books, the latest writings in design and the latest exhibitions, which must be some sort of reflection of the time/space in which we live. And it’s absurd particularly because this book pushes form in really interesting ways (novel meets meta-nonfiction meets poetry). Here are a few especially delicious fragments:

• - There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself
• - The bravery of childhood returning, like salmon to the source
• - The sky is more impersonal than the sea
• - In the midnight of your sanctum
• - An animal typewriter, silent until touched…; a typewriter that could type real kisses
• - Its margins melted like raw sugar into the steeping tea of night

My mouth waters just typing those words. Anyway, the back cover says of the book, “It also deals with the problem of redheads,” which is particularly hilarious, and one chapter even includes a list of the world’s most famous redheads, including Mark Twain. Needless to say, I’m enjoying the movements of the book and am reminded that the latest thing is not always the best thing; is not always the thing that is needed.