All was well lit though the sky was uniform in its greyness. The grass was bright green and greening still from the night's rain. His alarm clocks both rang and were snoozed twice before he rose and put on a collared blue dress shirt he'd last worn to see Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and some forgettable Czech. It was seventy degrees and the humidity hung like a deep-seeded premonition of evil. In the tall olive line of Norwegian Spruce the robins and redwing blackbirds were long at songs of joy and warnings. The cows at the end of the lane were deciding to stand or lay. In the dampness he saw the sweat of the day and muttered shitters to nothing in particular. Stepping into his car he turned the ignition and listened for what was to come from the radio. He didn't like it and fumbled through the console for Chronicles; the reward and wrath of righteousness seemed needed, Asa or Jehoshaphat in particular. The quick movements of white like heatspots before closed lids came in the right periphery as he backed onto the lawn to orient his car northward. Curly a surrogate mother cat and her nursling were springing towards a bush and flower patch that held a single tulip waiting to open to the day. The second kitten lay in spasms on the ground. He finished his turn looking in the rearview and saw the now permeable skull leaking red. Shitters. Stepping out he closed the gap and noticed for the first time the grey marking on its left side, even now corrupting, slightly the shape of Africa. Curly returned from the bush her head bobbing to the now soulless thing and the transient tom, Boxer, then appeared from the line of spruce. The garage door had a small section of the rubber weather stripping removed in the stead of the long corroded handle. It still broke from its traces easily. A brief scan lighted on a square of rust with a long worn handle that looked of fresh poplar. The head was upturned more than sharp so he had to use his foot as a backsplash to move the corpse on it. Even this slight nudge had the rubbery impression of lifelessness. Encephalon was growing out of the upturned ear red with veins of white. He carried it eastward to the uneven green growth next to a white corrugated steel machine shed that usually housed a green grain cart and flung the cat weedward. The effort was weak and it landed between the weeds and a freshly seeded cornfield like some splotchy spore growth from crust to bread. There it'll lay he thought and looked around to inventory the survivors. Then replaced his undertaking tool and wished the coyotes were hungry this night and shut the rasping garage door. Re-entereing the car he located the living again and drove off.

Chagall One or both parties Ungrounded in a fog Of unnatural colors: You always told love This way. But when asked to share Our lilac bouquet Bed with your beagles I said the nonsensical, Comforting animals Were only a metaphor.

Again, I return.

It has been an expansive amount of time. But I plan on being much more diligent with some words here. The words have arrived much more poetically recently; a publication known as the Belleville Park Pages agrees.

T.

A Most Tardy Update

For all eight of you that have followed this, I apologize for my inconsistencies. It's been an interesting few months of summer. I've learned a lot about myself and life. And I've been wondering about everything concerning knowledge, and the reading of books, and the obscurity that all information can bring.

Here's what's been accomplished in July, August, and September:

July:
Dandelion Wine
Ghosts
Kafka's Parables and Paradoxes
Give me a "J"
An Enemy of the People
The Wild Duck
Till We Have Faces

August:
Light in August
WWI British Poets
The Bronze Bow
Philosophy
Stella
Love Poems: Emily Dickenson
W.H. Auden: Selections
Mere Christianity
10 Books That Screwed up the World
Lord of the Flies

Sept:
Animal Farm
1984
Blood Meridian
The Raid
White Noise
The Giver
The Crucible
The Art of War
The Grapes of Wrath
Sophie's World
The Screwtape Letters
Emily Dickinson Poetry

It seems that September has been a month of death in the midst of what I've been reading. I didn't choose it such intentionally, but nevertheless so. It is the one thing that human beings cannot avoid: along with birth. It would seem that I have nothing else to add.

One Month Down.

I've been on a novella reading binge since finishing East of Eden. Large books are more intimate, but they can (especially when you have assigned yourself an inordinate amount of reading) take on the sensation of a wet bog, dragging all production down. So I dove into brief, less-than-two hundred-pagers with the hopes of bringing it all back.

I believe as of the night of May 31st, 2010, fourteen books have been read. I'm not sure on the exact page total, but it is somewhere between 2250 and 2600 I think, not too bad. Here's a list of the collage:

The End of the Affair- Graham Greene
To the Gas Chamber, Ladies and Gentlemen- Tadeuz Borowski
Cannery Row- John Steinbeck
The Procession- Khalil Gibran
To Believe in God- Joseph Pintauro
About a Boy- Nick Hornby
Meditations in an Emergency- Frank O'Hara
Tao Te Ching- Lao Tzu
East of Eden- John Steinbeck
Anthem- Ayn Rand
Antigone- Sophicles
The Love Girl and the Innocent- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Alchemist- Paulo Coelho
What's on Your Mind- Merlin Carothers

I'm off to a good, maybe even excellent, start for June. I've finished The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian, and am on pace to finish a book a day for about the first week (with all my side projects). Keep reading. I think the month of June's book will be Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, but this is just preliminary speculation.

Steinbeck is amazing.

Rounding out the first month.

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but that doesn't mean I've been lax with my reading. I'm actually relatively happy with my progress thus far. Just about five minutes ago I finished Anthem by Ayn Rand, pushing my monthly total to, I believe, twelve. I'm not sure where my page count is at, but it has to be behind schedule. It will probably take me four months to read the 9,000 pages instead of the intended three, but overall I'm impressed with my fortitude.

Anthem explores the connection between the concept of "we" versus the concept of "I." Rand was a proponent of objectivism, or egoistical hedonism, which promoted the philosophy of putting the self first. This is not initially a very attractive approach, but once you read the book, you at least see where Rand is coming from. The "we" mentality is basically that of peer pressure. If humanity is taught that they are part of a collective, and the collective's will is best, it allows for gross conscious deadening. I think Rand was trying to say that if you lose sight of the fact you are an individual, and have an independent mind, that in of itself is holy, you become inhuman. Where I would depart from Rand is her (I'm saying this from an assumptive position) belief that man is essentially good, and it is his nurturing that makes him digress from such. I believe if objectivism ran rampant, it could not promote happiness.

East of Eden (EOE) was as life changing as a non-Biblical book can be. Steinbeck found and saw something in his mind's eye, pertaining to humanity, that truly makes sense. In man's battle with good and evil, there must be a choice, a determination that takes place, that directs how he evolve. Heritage may be a strong factor, but choice is still there. This thought is presented through a modern re-telling of the story of Cain and Abel (in EOE Caleb and Aron) and the Hebrew verb "Timshel," which is best translated as "Thou mayest." When God speaks to Cain regarding his attitude about his sacrifice being less than Abel's, he says "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him" (Genesis 4:7). This "thou shalt" is better translated as "you are able to" or, "thou mayest" alluding to the fact that humanity, man, has the ability to combat, and defeat, sin.

In EOE, the various ways Timshel can be inserted into the human condition is explored. Forgiveness, greed, avarice, lust, depression, and any other vice that humanity struggles with can be faced and defeated.

I'll try to keep up with a weekly post, but that is all I can promise right now. Additionally, I've began a rating system for all of the books I've read, and hope to pass that on. It is on a 1-5 scale.

East of Eden 4.75
Anthem 4.00

Read on.

The Gravity of the Situation.

Last week I took it pretty light. I had to graduate, clean my apartment, host a friend, and thus was only able to finish the two works, Cannery Row and The Procession. But this week I've hit the books with both barrels. I finished The End of the Affair (a lovely British pun) by Graham Greene Sunday night, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski last night, and To Believe in God by Joseph Pintauro and Sister Corita today.

Prominently I have been wondering about Borowski's work. For in it he describes, from a non-Jewish perspective of Auschwitz and Birkenau, the millions of humans who willingly walked into gas chambers and crematoriums. Even those who knew what was to befall them went willingly. Why? How could so many allow themselves to be led silently to such a fate? According to the book, the gas chambers were some of the more merciful ways human life was taken, and yet it was all done without complaint.

It seems quite a few thoughts of mine have been given to this general slant: how would I behave if the most basic aspects of what I know as humanity are taken from me? I've decided that I don't. It would be unfair, and rather egotistical I believe, to deceive yourself with the notion that you are going to rise above the muddle, until you know what you are made out of. You can hope and pray that you would do the right thing, deny your bestial side for the sake of what Cormac McCarthy calls "the fire," but you will never truly know until the moment comes. Life is rife with braggarts who fell in their moment of trial.

A certain officer's story exemplified this utter confusion. His name was Schillinger. He bragged of personally killing over ten thousand individuals during the duration of Auschwitz, through "the fist, the club, or the revolver." The last day of his life, he went to take a woman from the gas chamber lines, apparently to use in his personal quarters. She refused, and threw gravel in his face, causing his revolver to drop from his hand. She "snatched it up, firing several shots into his abdomen," before being herded with the rest of the lines into the gas chamber. As Schillinger lay on the ground, his life expiring, he was heard to say "O God, my God, what have I done to deserve such suffering?" I just can't wrap my head around it.

Time advances along. Soon I will be headed into East of Eden, and in the meantime will try to land on some less weighty books. I'm doing well though, I actually am reading more than I'm buying for once, and if this trend continues for most of the summer, I'll be nigh finished with my pile. A rather hastily concocted estimate would probably put me at 500 pages thus far, but I'm reading About a Boy which is quite the page turner (as far as ease, not necessarily interest) and registers in at about 300 pages. Keep May 29th on your calendars, and good luck.