“Jesus Christ, you must have had an awful time in New York.”
“Why?”
“I read your blog. Coney Island and the bum and the police and all that.”
“Nope. I had a really swell time. But swell times don’t make very good stories.”
It is hard to write about being happy. It is good to be happy. I want to be happy. But nobody learns anything from it. So the danger is the temptation to write about misery. Read “Hunger” by Knut Hamsun if you want to feel misery. He won a Nobel Prize for it. But not many people do it that well. Writers like Hemingway and Faulkner and Steinbeck transformed trouble. T.C. Boyle wallows in it and it is funny good fun.
“I’m just telling stories,” I say. “I’ll give you something happy tomorrow.”
So. . . here goes.
Blue skies. Song birds. A slant of yellow sunshine explodes through the shutters. Shadow and light. I think of that Sunday in Central Park with no work on Monday.
OK Happy.
ReplyDelete"Read “Hunger” by Knut Hamsun if you want to feel misery."
ReplyDeleteI did. It was grim.
If you like (if that's the word the use) such things, check out Elia Kazan's movie, "America, America"
"But swell times don’t make very good stories"
Too true. I've got a well off friend who's descriptions of his travels are usually described with a sentence like: Everything was lovely and we had a great time.
ha! landed on happy.
ReplyDeletehorny as hell. geesh. stoned -- cocktail a repeat of gin and juice. we were listening to music. i came next door for a minute of aloneness to write.
“Said the lion to the lioness - "when you are amber dust -
No more a raging fire like the heat of the sun
(no liking but all lust) -
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood
and bone,
the rippling of bright muscles like
a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of
bright paws
Though we shall mate no more
Till the fire of that sun
and the moon -
Cold bone are one.”
Edith Sitwell
There are three things that walk with stately stride–no, four that strut about: the lion, king of animals, who won’t turn aside for anything.
Proverbs 30:29-30
To you, who roams
your own Serengeti,
by day
and I,
left to pant
in the hot areola
of mine -
a song.
We share
the same sun
and had we been young -
I would meet the deep rumble
of your desire – hard, strong
a sand-papered tongue
Come damp night
our wet breath,
our bodies, loosed
We exhale
make small stars
in wild grass
These thoughts bruise
I lick your fur
for I understand your kind.