My Update.
I'm reading a book by a man named Richard Brautigan. He was of the Beat Generation and killed himself in 1984. The novel, called "The Abortion" (it's in a collection, two novels and a book of short stories that I was sent for my birthday) begins in a library where people bring in books that they've written and leave them there. Just so someone will have them. Nobody can check anything out . . . everything stays in the library, just existing.
This is truly wonderful to me. I can't even explain why. All of his writing is so human. Like this, this is one of his short stories from Revenge of the Lawn, in it's entirety:
"A Study in California Flowers"
Oh, suddenly it's nothing to see on the way and it's nothing when I get there, and I'm in a coffeehouse, listening to a woman talk who's wearing more clothes than I have money in the world.
She is adorned in yellow and jewelry and a language that I cannot understand. She is talking about something that is of no importance, insisting on it. I can tell all this because the man who is with her will buy none of it, and stares absent-mindedly at the universe.
The man has not spoken a word since they sat down here with cups of espresso coffee accompanying them like small black dogs. Perhaps he does not care to speak any more. I think he is her husband.
Suddenly she breaks into English. She says, "He should know. They're his flowers," in the only language I understand and there's no reply echoing all the way back to the beginning where nothing could ever have been any different.
I was born forever to chronicle this: I don't know these people and they aren't my flowers.
--Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn
Does anybody else feel that like I do? Maybe it takes the whole book, I dunno. It's just inspiring to me. That's the sort of writing I want to do.
So that's my update.
This is truly wonderful to me. I can't even explain why. All of his writing is so human. Like this, this is one of his short stories from Revenge of the Lawn, in it's entirety:
"A Study in California Flowers"
Oh, suddenly it's nothing to see on the way and it's nothing when I get there, and I'm in a coffeehouse, listening to a woman talk who's wearing more clothes than I have money in the world.
She is adorned in yellow and jewelry and a language that I cannot understand. She is talking about something that is of no importance, insisting on it. I can tell all this because the man who is with her will buy none of it, and stares absent-mindedly at the universe.
The man has not spoken a word since they sat down here with cups of espresso coffee accompanying them like small black dogs. Perhaps he does not care to speak any more. I think he is her husband.
Suddenly she breaks into English. She says, "He should know. They're his flowers," in the only language I understand and there's no reply echoing all the way back to the beginning where nothing could ever have been any different.
I was born forever to chronicle this: I don't know these people and they aren't my flowers.
--Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn
Does anybody else feel that like I do? Maybe it takes the whole book, I dunno. It's just inspiring to me. That's the sort of writing I want to do.
So that's my update.