Losing My Way

Into the cold, you must wander....just don't eat the yellow snow. Just follow your nose and soon you'll be free. Me, I'll be alone crying, in the depths I have sank to. Crying so hard it turns into laughter, hitting so hard it turns back into tears. I wish you were here to tell me that I'm mad. In that wilderness you now call home, life or death would be better than how it would be with me. I should've gone with you, away to the woods thick with snow, but I can't do a thing until I've reached the bottom, bounced a few times, good for the soul.

I found this book puzzling, full of beauty and grace in parts but rather silly as well. Still, I'm glad I read it, because I had to know what the Ayatollah Khomeini had against it; why kill someone just for writing a book? On page 378, I found the answer:it's when Salman the Farsi says, "The closer you are to a conjuroer, the easier it is to spot the trick." That was bound to cause trouble, seeing how Rushdie blatantly calls Muhammed a fraud. No one likes to have their religion doubted by some intellectual who lacks faith, even if Rushdie has Mohammed stating that there is no difference between writers and whores. By then, nothing can protect Rushdie from the wrath of the faithful, though he fortunately suffered no fatal attack in the 35 years since the book's publication. So maybe I should get to work on my groundbreaking novel: Jesus Christ, Private Eye.

Before I forget, I want to put out some of my thoughts about The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It was interesting reading about Afghanistan and about the lives the refugees in California lived. If it had one weakness it was the narrator of the tale, who was not very admirable, though he did meet the challenge of returning to Afghanistan to do a favor for a friend.

I wonder how I failed to read The Sirens Of Titan when I was young. In my youth, I was on quite a Vonnegut tear, reading everything from Player Piano to Galapagos, and beyond that to Slapstick, which I didn't like. So I went years without reading any Vonnegut. Then I saw The Sirens Of Titan on the shelf, and with my usual impulsiveness I decided it would be nice to read after Crime & Punishment by Dostoevsky. I luckily had never read it before. Many concepts he dealt with are present here, and he was honing his style, but still managed to tell a good story. In many ways, it might be his best book, although I still think Slaughterhouse 5 was his masterpiece. The two books share a connection in the planet Tramaldafore and the concept of time and how it passes yet still remains.

With the gun pointed at my chest/ what use can words be?/ Cold, dead eyes glaring at me/ show no pity will come my way./// No tragic tale could move this man/ nor any jest lighten his soul./ I await with only feeble sighs/ It's the the end of all my dreams./// I recall a wrong turn long ago/ from where I was once loved/ to a place where I'm unnown/ trapped in the shadow/ of the light that no one/ can ever claim to have seen.///

Three weeks without a post...I am not proud of that. It concerns me that I don't express myself like I once did, but I read a book that I loved so much that I had to write about it, even if no one will see my review. It is called And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, and I was awed. The scope of the story, its many shifts in direction and the sentiment that touches the soul without resorting to manipulating the reader's emotions shows that Hosseini is a master. Just writing about it brings it back to me: the love of the brother and sister who are separated at a young age, only to be reunited 60 years later when neither can remember, the brother who never forgot until old age damaged his memories and the sister who was too young to recall the love they had. That was the main gist of the novel, yet there was so much more, and it all fit together, a puzzle stretching from Afghanistan to Paris and to California. The only reason I grabbed it was because it had large print

O what a calamity befell our Lord Mayor, to be attacked by ruffians and left, stripped naked in his coach. Then a woman passed by and saw his nakedness, then called her friends to clothe him in the frilliest underwear and a lovely blue skirt. The Lord Mayor couldn't refuse their kind deed and soon there was the sound of much talking. Suddenly a man came. in the carriage, a merchant of some kind, who sat next to the Lord Mayor and rubbed his crotch. 'Why, it seems the wearing of women's clothing is getting you excited. Could it be that you are thinking about penis?' The merchant rubbed some more, then said, 'Your arousal at the thought of men is obvious O Lord Mayor. Perhaps you wish to see my cock.' And the merchant showed his penis, and the Lord Mayor grabbed that penis. 'Forgive me dear God, but I must put this Cock in my mouth.' And so the Lord Mayor did. 'Very good mayor. Yell out the window how much you love Cock.' And the Lord Ma