and so she became a pillar of salt






.


Reading is, writing is, in some way analogous to sport, or at least to exertion. There’s a ZONE and you know when you’re in it, you know when you’re gonna get in it, you know when you’re not in it, and you know when you’re not gonna get in it. Sometimes I turn the corner of some mile or get to the summit of something or turn a corner and I think, “yup”. And sometimes I think, “nope”. I watched the playoff beards grow and the Sabres win and I was thinking, “Maybe”. Maybe a Thing, or maybe a No Thing. Sometimes it’s like that too. (Not usually.)




I am reading Slaughter House 5 because I never did. I meant to:

'I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction. The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and He overthre those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
So it goes.
Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them.
And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
So she was turned to a pillar of salt.
So it goes.'




I have a grudge against James Joyce. Here’s how it went. First, he intimidated me, which is never a good place to start. Some people find that compelling, but I don’t. I don’t assume you’re going to be more interesting for that, just more insecure underneath, as if what I’m really picking up is the distant sound of something tolling in a hollow. I had read Portrait of The Artist a few years prior, but I didn’t know who James was then, and then when we re-met it turned out he was some big shit whatever with reading groups that met on Saturdays and Hegel would be there and it was very cliquey. But some of the people in the club, I trusted. Susan Howe, for instance, who on a personal level can be emotionally dangerous, but when she says something about what she needs to read, she’s quiet and she means it like she’s talking about what it’s like to be terrified and you think “eek, yup, stop!” So I borrow Ulysses. I start. It’s summer, I’m lazy, I don’t get far, I ask a question about how he’s using a word. The answer started with “Good for you for asking, that’s a smart question.” And I didn’t hear the rest of the answer, because I was thinking When I read Portrait I could go from the English to the Latin and back again without looking at the footnotes or slowing in the least Jackass, and that was that. Now when I think of Joyce, I think it’s something I might want, like a glass of wine, and/but I picture myself getting the glass and being lectured at from above about the wine’s nose and its legs and its Wine Advocate rating while the candlelight flickers unnoticed across my shoulders and smooth upper back, my prettiest parts I reckon, and I take another long pull of the booze and think I wish I were playing Air Hockey right now. . . . . . . --I’m probably being a snippy bitch. So I ordered Finnigan’s Wake. But it’s snowing here still and again and stiiiilllll, and I am burning through my “meant to have read it” pile at the rate of frustration . . . I’m not sure ordering Joyce is a good sign, given that. --Maybe.




Meanwhile, the ending of The Road was a bit Aslan, but I cried anyway. Which was nice. If I had a uniform, it would be a pair of butt-worn jeans and a t-shirt that reads “Please Get to Me” and the lettering would be invisible.

You am I – Please Don’t Ask Me to Smile (web)