Good Reads

This past month I've read more than ever before and it feels great. Here are some choice excerpts from those books and poetry:

Heaven
by Linda Pastan

Are there season in heaven?
In God's anteroom are there windows
that look out on trees like these--

each leaf a note for the brass
ensemble in autumn--
the dry ones castanets

clicking: October, October.
Can heaven itself be golden
enough to rival all this?


"When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with the country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again".
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

"A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose".
The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

"Was I a poor leader? Was I a coward? I knew this mantra from other failed expeditions. The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations of self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are".
High Exposure
David Breashears

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter-- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... and one fine morning-- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past".
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitgerald

"Ant it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time."
The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles


And now for some funny ones...

"Afterwards, to round off a perfect evening, I clambered over to a nearby K Mart and had a look around. K Marts are a chain of discount stores and they are really depressing places. You could take Mother Teressa to a K Mart and she would get depressed. It's not that there's anything wrong with the K Mart's themselves, it's the customers. K Marts are always full of the sort of people who give their children their names that rhyme: Lonnie, Donnie, Ronnie, Connie, Bonnie. The sort of people who would stay in to watch "The Munsters." Every woman there has at least 4 children and they all look like they've been fathered by a different man. The woman always weights 250 lbs. She is always walloping a child and brawling, "If you don't behave Ronnie, I'm not gonna bring you back here no more!" As if Ronnie could care less about never going to K Mart again. It's the place you would go if you wanted to buy a stereo system for under $35 and didn't care if it sounded like the band was playing in a mailbox under water in a istant lake. If you go shopping at K Mart you know you've touched bottom. My dad like K Marts."
The Lost Continent
Bill Bryson