dirty little whirlwind, i'm pinned to the heart of your swirl.

DISCLAIMER: this is a personal blog (i just want to write about my life 😭) and does not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or perspectives of my employer or church.

Tag: novel

“I’m studying this whole tragedy routine, in back of my jellified brain. The Lechugas have to send themselves teddy bears, for instance. Know why? Because Max was an asshole. Saw-teeth of damnation I feel just thinking it, waiting for the fiery hounds to unleash mastications and puke my fucken soul to hell. But at the same time, here’s me with water in my eyes, for Max, for all my classmates. The truth is a corrosive thing. It’s like everybody who used to cuss the dead is now lining up to say what perfect angels of God they were. What I’m learning is the world laughs through its ass every day, then just lies double-time when shit goes down. It’s like we’re on a Pritikin diet of fucken lies. I mean – what kind of fucken life is this?”

‘Vernon God Little’ by DBC Pierre

July 16, 2012

book, dbc pierre, novel, vernon god little
“"You can’t serve paper on a rat, baby sister.”
“I never said you could.”
“These shitepoke lawyers think you can but you can’t. All you can do with a rat is kill him or let him be. They don’t care nothing about papers. What is your thinking on it?”
“Are you going to drink all that?”“

– ‘True Grit’ by Charle Portis

June 12, 2012

book, charles portis, novel, true grit
“Literature could turn you into an asshole; he’d learned that teaching grad-school seminars. It could teach you to treat real people the way you did characters, as instruments of your own intellectual pleasure, cadavers on which to practice your critical faculties.”

– ‘The Art of Fielding,’ by Chad Harbach

February 25, 2012

book, chad harbach, novel, quote, the art of fielding
“With Jack’s love, everything Vivi had not been given could now be made up for. Every reflection of herself that was not mirrored in her mother’s eyes, every curious question her father had not asked, every visitation of the belt on her true-blonde skin could be redeemed. Vivi did not think of these promises on that afternoon with her skirt swirling and her hair swinging, but they curled inside her and attached themselves.

To look at Vivi, it would be difficult to spot the tectonic shift that took place in her that afternoon. But it would render her more vulnerable than a person wants to be. It would create infinitesimal fault lines, perhaps profound enough to be passed on, like brown eyes or a proclivity for mathematics.”

“The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” by Rebecca Wells

December 12, 2011

book, novel, quote, the divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood
“"Dot,” he whispered uncomfortably, “you’ll forget. Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know – because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”“

– "The Beautiful and the Damned” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

June 28, 2011

book, f scott fitzgerald, novel, the beautiful and the damned
“‘The hell with my arm. You lose an arm you lose an arm. There’s worse things than lose an arm. You’ve got two arms and you’ve got two of something else. And a man’s still a man with one arm and one of those. The hell with it,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Then after a minute he says, ‘I got those other two still.’ Then he started the car and said, ‘Come one, we’ll go see these fellows.’”

– “To Have and Have Not” by Ernest Hemingway

January 28, 2011

book, ernest hemingway, musing, novel, rahnt, rant, to have and have not
“The observations and encounters of a man of solitude and few words are at once more nebulous and more intense than those of a gregarious man, his thoughts more ponderable, more bizarre and never without a hint of sadness. Images and perceptions that might easily be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions occupy him unduly; they are heightened in the silence, gain in significance, turn into experience, adventure, emotion. Solitude begets originality, bold and disconcerting beauty, poetry. But solitude can also beget perversity, disparity, the absurd and the forbidden.”

– “Death in Venice” by Thomas Mann

December 23, 2010

book, death in venice, novel, quote, thomas mann
“My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.”

– ‘this lullaby’ by sarah dessen

November 11, 2010

book, novel, quote, sarah dessen, this lullaby
“He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.”

– ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Earnest Hemingway

September 5, 2010

book, earnest hemmingway, musing, novel, rahnt, rant, the old man and the sea
“In a semi-dazed state, Nurdin watched the yellow streetlights and the snowflakes and the myriad of cars on highways winding around each other like ribbons, like nooses, if you please, your obedient servant. Big Ben says eighteen hours Greenwich mean time, and Father looks up, raises an eyebrow, if you please, and shush, everyone listens to perfect inflections from the BBC, you dare not scrape or cough at this holiest of hours at home and you hold your water and your bowels and your wind, and if a giggle escapes, then the wrath of God, Haji Lalani’s cane on your buttocks until you cry out Mercy, mercy, Father, but Haji Lalani will complete his quarter-century – Mercy, wails the lover Akber, but the strokes keep coming, regulated, calculated, for it is God’s punishment and Akber lies comatose, Father falls back exhausted, and you become aware of the wetness between your thighs.”

– ‘No New Land’ by M.G. Vassanji

July 22, 2010

book, m.g. vassanji, no new land, novel
“A moment later, Mrs. Ames joined the men outside and, to my horror, smiled. I’d never seen Mrs. Ames smile before, and the thought had never occurred to me that such an act was even possible for her. But there it was, her mouth open in the white daylight, her teeth exposed. One of the men stepped forward, removed his sunglasses, and said something to her. She touched her hair with her hand and laughed. Kimberly Plumme, who liked to insert marbles into her vagina at recess, said, "Gross.” Her lips frowned in disgust. I myself was horrified to see Mrs. Ames laugh. And then blush. To see her in such a state of obvious bliss was unbearable. I had to look away.“

– Commercial Break from ‘Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

(this passage made me laugh.)

July 13, 2010

augusten burroughs, book, commercial break, magical thinking, musing, novel, rahnt, rant
“Yet, when the weather turned and the sun filtered into even her basement windows, when the sunbeams were laden with spring dust and the old tin ashtrays began to stink of a winter of nicotine and contemplation, the flaws in her plodding private world were made public, even to her, for although she loved old shabby things, things that had already been loved and suffered, objects with a past, when she saw that her arms were slug-pale and her fingerprints grained with old, old ink, that the detritus with which she bedizened her bulletin boards was curled and valueless, when she found that her eyes would no longer focus in the light, she was always ashamed, for the image of the Good Life long ago stamped on her soul was quite different from this, and she suffered in contrast.”

– ‘Bear’ by Marian Engel

July 11, 2010

bear, book, marian engel, novel
“When did the body first set out on its own adventures? Snowman thinks; after having ditched its old travelling companions, the mind and the soul, for whom it had once been considered a mere corrupt vessel or else a puppet acting out other dramas for them, or else bad company, leading the other two astray. It must have got tired of the soul’s constant nagging and whining and the anxiety-driven intellectual web-spinning of the mind, distracting it whenever it was getting its teeth into something juicy or its fingers into something good. It had dumped the other two back there somewhere, leaving them stranded in some damp sanctuary or stuffy lecture hall while it made a beeline for the topless bars, and it had dumped culture along with them: music and painting and poetry and plays. Sublimation, all of it; nothing but sublimation, according to the body. Why not cut to the chase?

But the body had its own cultural forms. It had its own art. Executions were its tragedies, pornography was its romance."

– ‘Oryx and Crake’ by Margaret Atwood

July 7, 2010

book, margaret atwood, musing, novel, oryx and crake, rahnt, rant
it is 5:20 am and i am sitting up, awake, having just finished reading the hours, bathed in the smoke of cinnamon incense, listening to morning birds chirp outside my window, wondering about life.

this book has made me question new things – or at least allowed me to rephrase old, lingering questions.

“We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep – it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

Heaven only knows why we love it so.”

– ‘The Hours’ by Michael Cunningham

June 13, 2010

book, michael cunningham, musing, novel, rahnt, rant, the hours
“She is not given to fawning over celebrities, no more than most people, but can’t help being drawn to the aura of fame – and more than fame, actual immortality – implied by the presence of a movie star in a trailer on the corner of MacDougal and Spring streets. These two girls standing beside Clarissa, twenty if not younger, defiantly hefty, slouching into each other, laden with brightly colored bags from discount stores; these two girls will grow to middle and then old age, either wither or bloat; the cemeteries in which they’re buried will fall eventually into ruin, the grass grown wild, browsed at night by dogs; and when all that remains of these girls is a few silver fillings lost underground the woman in the trailer, be she Meryl Streep or Vanessa Redgrave or even Susan Sarandon, will still be known. She will exist in the archives, in books; her recorded voice will be stored away among other precious and venerated objects.”

– ‘The Hours’ by Michael Cunningham

June 7, 2010

book, michael cunningham, musing, novel, rahnt, rant, the hours