my time on the commuter rail every morning tends to get soaked up by transcribing interviews for TPB, but i'm going to a hip hop show [big digits at harper's ferry, to be precise] post "real" work tonight and didn't feel like lugging my macbook from back bay to allston and on to cambridge, ugh. on the days where pressing play on the tape recorder makes me want to gauge my eyes out, or on mornings such as this one, i read. it's not that exciting. the books i've been picking up lately have been, though. i finally devoured crime and punishment not too long ago and after that i started roberto bolano's 2666, but i used it as a pillow one especially sleep-deprived morning on the train and sadly left it on my seat :/ i was really heartbroken about the loss of 2666 - it was a hardcover, as the paperback version of bolano's opus came in three volumes prior to its release as a single softcover on september 1st, and the book itself isn't exactly flying off the shelves at barnes & noble given that oprah hasn't put her stamp of approval on it [yet] and bolano rarely tends to be a favorite amongst anyone but latin american lit majors and intellectually masturbating poets/vagabonds.
i love bolano. [i don't consider myself an intellectually masturbating poet, though i did study latin american lit pretty extensively.] i had to read una novelita lumpen in eduardo lago's Orillas Atlanticas ["Atlantic Shores"] my sophomore year at Sarah Lawrence and bolano's simple, poignant prose was easy to meander through at a point where i was conversationally proficient in spanish at best and had a waaaays to go when it came to spanish reading comprehension. i can't remember if it was eduardo or one of my other tutors/professors, in new york, buenos aires or elsewhere, who encouraged 2666, but the recommendation stuck with me and i finally found it on amazon for a decent price back when i was bored and looking for things to keep me busy during my bout of funemployment early this year. i bought it and i kept putting off starting it until i got the new gig, found myself loathing my 1.5 hour commute every morning, and needed an escape from an interview or two every once in awhile.
aaaaaaaaanyways. i love, love the savage detectives so far. i'm going to reread it in spanish when i'm through with it in english, as i fear i'm getting rusty. this particular line really struck me today, but i'm not going to give you the context for it because i feel like the sentiment stands on its own:
"You can woo a girl with a poem, but you can't hold on to her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement."
given a few recent epiphanies, i just thought this was the right sentence for me to stumble across at the right time, and it made me think. i'm horrifically distracted by just that one sentence even still and i'm strangely okay with it, even if i have a never-ending list of things to do today. if i'm gonna be distracted, it might as well be by a genius piece o' lit that gets me thinking, right?
