drank six beers and talked at length with the beautiful waitress after i asked her what the tattoo on her bicep was and she read it to me and i recognized it as a bukowski quote and we went on and on for a while and i got her to start using profanity and i spent a shit ton on beer for this dismal interaction but i consider it worthwhile so eh
I saw this on Saturday night, thought it was amazing, but the theater was almost empty. Haven’t seen anybody mention it on facebook and there don’t even seem to be many reviews.
Any theater that shows the occasional indie will most likely be showing this, in which case you should definitely go see it.
“Despair was in him like a lodger. Like a parasite that had turned out his very being from its abode and taken up the shape of that space within him where it once had been.”
Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
“Her grandmother spoke to her often of men and she spoke with great earnestness and she said that rash men were a great temptation to women and this was simply a misfortune like others and there was little that could be done to remedy it. She said that a woman was to live a life of difficulty and heartbreak and those who said otherwise simply had no wish to face the facts. And she said that since this was so nor could it be altered one was better to follow one’s heart in joy and in misery than simply to seek comfort for there was none. To seek it was only to welcome the misery and to know little else. She said that these were things all women knew yet seldom spoke of. Lastly she said that if women were drawn to rash men it was only that in their secret hearts they knew that a man who would not kill for them was of no use at all.”
Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
(Source: thejewishprincess, via harrysontucker)
SOMEONE ON THE STREET BELOW MY OPEN WINDOW IS HOLDING AN ACTUAL BOOM BOX PLAYING I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AFRICA AND SCREAMING “TAKE ME BACK LINDA” WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON
(via awesomephilia)
Just finished the fifth draft of a project I’ve been working on since August.
First draft: ~28,000 words
Fifth draft: ~23, 600 words
Thumbs in suspenders, I’m going out for a drink.
partybarackisinthehousetonight:
im going to open a literature-themed coffee/dessert shop called “Lord of the Pies” and some of the flavor names will be:
- the grape gatsby
- lime & punishment
- the adventures of blackberry finn
- the crepes of wrath
- the catcher in the pie
- war and quiche
- around the world in eighty buffets
- 20,000 leagues under the tea
- the call of the wildberry
OPEN IT AND I WILL COME.
(via sweetestabandon)
“You Made Me Love You” by Harry James, from Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters
I was going through old phone pictures today and stumbled across this super blurry one (courtesy of Madeleine) from the night I smoked my ~*~first cigarette~*~ in the backyard of Happy House + it got me thinking about what a good night that was, and cold tomato sauce, and blissful cat-holding, and “young Joan Didion vibes,” and how different or maybe the same things are now, and whether or not this me would be surprised about the way the year turned out.
This got abruptly poignant and relatable in the last three lines.
If you’re a kid and you want to be a writer, it’s unlikely that your elders are gonna give you a hard time about it; it is, ostensibly, a pursuit that’ll bolster your grades if you really get a grip on it and since we’re all pretty much in agreement about the necessity of a good education it’ll be looked upon as a productive and felicitous pastime. It’s also – as far as youthful hobbies go – rather quiet and inexpensive. A parent’s delight.
If in college you sustain this interest and decide to pursue a degree in English or creative writing, as these are the subjects of your forte and passion, you might get some hemming and hawing about how law would really be a lot more lucrative, journalism more secure, but, again, slightly fewer but still pretty much all of us are in agreement about the sanctity and value of a college education, whatever its focus, and so fine, go ahead, they’ll support you. Now that they’re paying so much money for your education you better believe they’re fans of your knack for reading and writing.
And the glory of this, for the young writer, is that your parents will suspect – on account of how discreet you hopefully are – that school work is really your main focus and writing just a pastime, when in fact you approach the two in reverse order of priority. College, with occasional interruptions for exams and term papers and classes, will afford you four years of leisure reading and writing exercises that should make you maybe just about nearly halfway ready for the big leagues.
Then you graduate. Writing is still your priority, as always, but there’s nothing to mask it with. You’re living with your folks again and they’re so delighted with your diploma and all these writing skills you’ve fostered – you’ll make a fine journalist; or, better yet, you’ll get into advertising and use all that witty rhetoric to convince people that Pepsi is better than Coke and good grief how your wallet will bulge and aren’t you excited do you need any help with your resume…
So now you’ve been so discreet about your writing over the years as to become blindingly sensitive about discussing your work, your intentions, routine. Except how are you now to explain to your parents that you’d happily pay them, say, a severed toe for every month they allow you to mooch and stay home and write? Do you even really want that? You know that the thought of spending your days at a cash register gives you a cancerous feeling in your gut, but is it not more practical and noble and adult to just confront that feeling and get a job? Would it really be better to spend another year at home?
What if the pressure coming from every direction is not to get an average job but to start at the bottom rung of something you’ll ascend over time, a career track? How do you say no? Should you? If you do say no, what alternative do you present?
How can you take any of this even halfway seriously when you realize after careful scrutiny that your problem here has been the conundrum of how many melodramatic movies in which a glossy-eyed kid yells at their skeptical parent that they’re “gonna be somebody” and so on, so on?
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon… And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
Joan Didion (via kateoplis)
I read All the Pretty Horses last week in three days and I’m now halfway through the sequel, The Crossing, and I have a feeling that thirty years from now, when I’m looking back on the feverish two-or-so weeks I spent reading McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, I’ll be citing it as a moment of change.
Motherfucking Leonard Cohen
