One of those strangers, Jennifer, had a full head of thick red hair, and as I spoke with her, we became deeply entwined in conversation, our sentences looping around each other and snaking in and out, pulsing upwards and dipping downwards, surging forward like a musical score. I wasn't sure I had seen her before, although her deep blue eyes seemed vaguely familiar. Her blindingly white skin prevented me from generating meaningful recognition."We've been talking." She said to me abruptly, her long bangs falling into place over her eyes so that I adjusted my gaze to watch her lips as she spoke. "We've been talking about you."
"Oh yeah?" I asked, unsurprised. "I've been at this party for hours and I thought I heard my name a few times."
She set down her wine glass and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "We've decided to let you in on a secret."
Jennifer's voice had become low and serious, and despite the gravity of this moment, I found my gaze scanning the book shelves behind her shoulder. Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives. I never did finish that book. I never did really like it either - delinquents traipsing around, sleeping around, skipping school, and it's all about poetry but there isn't one goddamn line of poetry in the whole thing. I fingered my right earring. One reviewer from 2008 said that reading this book was like
when you find a guy who's cute but wearing sandals and a really ugly Hardrock Cafe tee shirt and has long, scruffly hair and listens to Latin Jazz and is really into capoeira and rock climbing -- like really into capoeira and rock climbing -- and you go over to his house and realize he owns no books, except like three Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks and maybe The Outlaw Poetry Anthology and a hardcover of Guns, Germs, and Steel that his aunt gave him for Christmas six years ago and which of course he never opened because he hasn't read a book since high school.... but then you go out into his backyard and both climb up into the tree there, and he makes you laugh a lot for some reason, and then you stay up until 6 am drinking ginger ale, and then awhile after the sun comes up you both go to bed, and he doesn't even have blankets he has a sleeping bag even though he's actually almost thirty years old, but suddenly you don't care about that anymore, and pretty soon you're walking around in his baggy Hardrock Cafe tee shirt and sandals because you lost one of your shoes and your own clothes are too dirty to wear anymore since you haven't been home in a week and you're so stoned out of your mind just from being around him that you start to think that tee shirt is actually kind of cool, and anyway, it smells like him, and him is the best smell that you've ever smelt, the best idea you've ever even thought of, if that makes sense, which of course it doesn't, because at this point you're gone....
At this point I had the book in my hands, flipping through to page 300 or so where I had left off.
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4 comments:
This guy from the blue text: The way he is described is so cold and critical, and ...Latin Jazz? Hardrock Cafe? Oh no!
What is 'Capoeira'? Oh.
Is there such a thing as 'The Outlaw Poetry Anthology'? Written by real outlaws? Please tell me it does, and is. I want it so bad.
I lack the subtlety for most poetry, so the stuff that reaches me is the weird and the gross and the big. Stuff written by outlaws sounds about right.
This philosopher guy I've been reading lately, J. Krishnamurti, never read books, and I'll bet he smelled like enlightenment.
Rambling thoughts. I'm glad you're back.
You too! We have a draft of a letter for you that has been sitting around for almost too months :(.
Matthew, I think you would really like this book. Total outlaw poets, not that we actually see the poetry they supposedly write. But I get the sense that that's the point - this absent poetry is so calculating and mimetic that we don't need to read it to get a sense of the style. The poetry is SO not subtle that it disappears.
Let the letter sit there for as long as it needs. No hurry ever.
Total Outlaw Poets. Sounds good.
I like how you flipped to 'page 300 or so,' it's always so strange that feeling of picking up a book that you put down a long time ago. Even though you don't remember all the details of the narrative as long as you are following along and getting somewhere that's all you need.
It's like meeting up with someone you used to be friends with and you have to feel around a bit to find familiar ground to have a conversation. Doesn't really matter what you talk about as long as things gather some momentum.
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