I Luff the Library

That's more than love, is how much I love it. It's indescribable to describe my love for free literature and the like. Like in "Annie Hall," when Alvie Singer tells Annie that he loves her so much, that it can't even be called "love" that he luffs/lovures her. Ooh, ooh, ooh! So, I'm still reading "Kafka on the Shore" (wow! weird and awesome) and as Kafka Tamura (one of the main characters) is currently residing in a library, reading lots of books and holding long discussions with Oshima (Kafka's supporting character) about books, I've been thinking a lot about books, and today I went to the library to get books. Specifically T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems, 1. because Oshima spoke about the straw-filled hollow men from Hollow Men and 2. In reading an RS article, Woodstock director Michael Wadleigh said the aftermath of the festival was reminiscent of Waste Land - so I had to, I was pulled, in other words.

Re-reading these poems reminded me of sitting in junior year English class, sighing over failed attempts to comprehend the magnitude of Eliot's words in Prufrock and others, but now I find joy and delight in the memory of those attempts and the newfound ability to grasp hold of said concepts and images. Let me type out one for you....

'Preludes'

I.
The winter evening settles down
With smells of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.


II.
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One think of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.


III.
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.


IV.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:

The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
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And I really liked this one, too:

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.
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And then, after watching a trailer for "Bruno" I watched a trailer for "2012" that made my heart race and think of 'Waste Land', especially the ending ("This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper").

So, I got that, and this life and pictures book about F. Scott Fitzgerald, and CDs!! Erykah Badu's "Mama's Gun," Fiona Apple's "When the Pawn," Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, Volume 1," "The Best of Grand Master Flash, Mellie Mel & The Furious Five," Priscilla Ahn's "A Good Day," and "The Best of the Girl Groups: Volume 2" - like I said, I luff the library and all its precious treasures. Now to make use of my finds...