It’s summer's kick-off weekend and, appropriately enough, it was in the upper 80s and sunny yesterday.Jen came home early from work and we all, her, Oni and I, sat on the veranda with our books and margaritas, enjoying the breeze, the view and our novels. Is there a better, more laid back, chill-city time of year? The heat has yet to become painfully, suffocatingly oppressive. The bay isn’t chock full of loud, ocean floor fucking up, mussel and clam disturbing motor boats. Best of all, the trees are all kitted out in their full-on gorgeous green fancy-wear. Us? We’re in shorts and Ts and feeling free, free, FREE!
In Bookland, Jen’s just started Richard Kadrey’s The Everything Box. Oni’s on God’s War by Kameron Hurley. Me? I’m enjoying the hell outta Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk.
It's brimming with great lines, such as:
I thought at times that poetry might be an elegant way of screaming.I couldn’t agree more. Fer instance:
Evolution by Sherman AlexieBuffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation
right across the border from the liquor store
and he stays open 24 hours a day,7 days a week
and the Indians come running in with jewelry
television sets, a VCR, a full-length beaded buckskin outfit
it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill
takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it
all catalogues and filed in a storage room. The Indians
pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawn
their skeletons, falling endlessly from the skin
and when the last Indian has pawned everything
but his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks
closes up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the old
calls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES
charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter.
~~~
Another of Lillian's great lines:
The point of living in the world is just to stay interested.Lillian Boxfish is 84 and knows whereof she speaks.
I knew The Amazing Bob was ready to stop fighting the hard battle with his beautiful bod, was ready for his final scenes and curtain calls when he lost interest in everything. He couldn’t be arsed to scribble out a few lines of poetry or play his piano or even watch his old cowboy movies. He’d just sit in his big Papa chair, Coco on his lap, thinking or putting up with my yapping or just napping.
But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust!
~~~
Whenever words failed us, TAB and I would shout: PENGUIN DUST, I want PENGUIN DUST!
I thought at times that poetry might be an elegant way of screaming.Another Green World – Brian Eno
I often snark "Of course the owners of the liquor store just off the rez are white, why do you ask?" /snark as it is invariably so, having always been thus. Not doing so well here these days, though it wasn't all that long ago they couldn't keep beer around long enough to get cold. Pawn is another story ...
ReplyDeletePawn is a cultural thing not easily explained, not lost to translation but ... lost. Since we're all out on the deck with books: the best touchstone on pawn I've found were in Tony Hillerman's Jimmy Chee and Legendary Lt Leaphorn mystery novels, though you have to read several to get a feel for it. If you've an interest in the southwest inter-mountain geology and the indigenous cultures there I highly recommend them, more than one. Paints a picture, they do.
The Alexie quote kinda' highlights something Kesey pointed to in Cuckoo, back in the sixties: you don't suck anything out of that bottle, the bottle sucks it out of you. One of those things that haunts.
That quote IS mega haunting!
DeleteTony Hillerman—thank you for reminding me of him. Billions of years ago, I read all (or nearly all) of his books. Loved Chee and Leaphorn. Loved the settings and his way with words. I believe I’m well overdo for some rereading.
Can you say anything more about pawn shops? Ya see, I was out around the Window Rock area before TAB and I tied the knot. I stopped in a pawn shop and picked up pair of very simple turquoise/silver rings—our wedding bands. I always wondered if that was a bad thing to do—what if the original owner came back to reclaim them? Guilt—my superpower.
Happy to know the off rez liquor stores are no longer doing such a booming biz!
My understanding is traditionally, before corruption, pawn was more akin to barter, on parr with pitching pennies, rolling dice, that sort of thing. It was so easily corrupted because the whites have a long history of indeed their entire religion seems to be based upon usary and insury.
DeleteI think your very simple turquoise and silver wedding bands are nothing but good ju-ju. That was big business back in those days (grins sheepishly), the odds are astronomical they never "belonged" to anyone but you. (I have a couple I carry on my keyring 😏)
Tony's daughter recently picked up the story-line, I would not be surprised if the next iteration features a Little Jimmie Chee. Tony himself turned a phrase that resonates: genteel poverty.
Thank you, you've killed my guilt monster!
DeleteI've hesitated in picking up Hillerman's daughter's books (why?!) but they've been singing serious siren songs.
"genteel poverty," sounds nice, comfortable even (and it often is).