book reports
august 1st, 2000

i finished dangerous angels yesterday...what a magnificent read. those 
words really got inside me and helped me to realize that voices that are 
harmonious with my own disjointed, surreal one really are heard (and are 
even in demand) in that crazy realm called modern literature. so perhaps 
the pictures i paint with my words will be desired by a thousand eyes and 
hands soon enough. of course, i've come to realize that none of that 
really matters, anyway. i create my art for myself, and even if one other 
soul never reads it, even if i never make a dime from any of my creations, 
it doesn't matter. these are pieces of me, bits of my soul, ways to place 
memories in cement, things i do to immortalize little wayward thoughts, 
and lingering dreams. ways to express things i can't say otherwise. to 
share emotions in a sense that other people may finally understand how it 
feels. little pieces of me. i had been debating about whether or not i 
should fill my website with my words as i once did, or ony select a few 
that have been published and (therefore) protected...but how silly? the 
internet, this cyberverse that i adore, is my one sure ticket to ever 
sharing any of my dreams with anyone else out there who might care to 
listen. to hell with the technicalities and the details - these are all of 
the things i love, combined. i should go crazy with all of this. make 
something big and elaborate and easy to change and update. which is what i 
am in doing, in very small steps.

weetzie bat and her collection of characters...wow. i was totally smitten. 
los angeles was described as some intricate lost fairytale world, like a 
constant carnival ride, with darkness that the city seems to choose to 
ignore, hidden beneath their tinsel and christmas lights and the illusion 
of safety and magic hollywood has crocheted for it. witch baby could see 
it, and my secret agent lover man, too. it was just incredible. because of 
my newfound respect for the punk lifestyle, dirk's teenage lifestyle in 
the last book only appealed to me more. gaining a greater understanding 
about how the other side of the coin dealt with their inner teenage 
demons, while i was standing in the shadows and trying to be invisible. 
there is something about that total confrontation that i have immense 
amounts of respect for - and i wish i had more of. i found myself a little 
miffed that love was so easy in the book - perhaps not love itself, but 
that everyone found the person they had been waiting their entire lives 
for, that everyone fell into place and totally complemented eachother, all 
except for charlie bat, of course - but even he was still in love with 
weetzie's mom. love was in the air and all around, and the people who 
found eachother fit together so perfectly. the bitterness in me couldn't 
help but wince at that, how ridiculous it was. because there is still a 
big part of me that is convinced the whole entire idea of "falling in 
love" is an elaborate media hoax, and whenever i read stories or see 
movies a part of me churns and gets queasy. that part of me lessens every 
day, though. as if that type of love doesn't even matter in my life 
anymore, as if i could live the rest of my time on this planet quite 
happily without ever thinking of it again. i "fall in love" with my 
daughter every single day, i "fall in love" with my friends and my 
memories, with perfect strangers performing random acts of kindness. i 
"fall in love" with the world, with the looming mountains all smoky in the 
distance, with the different shades of green in the fields outside, with 
my grandfather's tall stories of military operations and catamounts, with 
a big road in front of me and load music in my head. i "fall in love" with 
myself, with hands on the keyboard and feet on the floor, with a body 
driven to dance in the middle of housecleaning, with a spirit that is 
*too* meek and *too* gentle but only because she wants to give everyone in 
the world a second chance (and i suppose that's really admirable, even 
though it does get on my nerves every once in a while), with a soul that 
is strong and fights to accomplish so very much for such a small person. 
but to find myself consumed as i have always been in the past by the one, 
the only, the true - i don't think i could ever do that again, and if i 
ever found myself falling into it, i think i would become rather disgusted 
with myself. of course, maybe the key to finding "true love" is when you 
*don't* compromise your life to anyone else's standards. but that's an 
entire other tangent, and it is much too lazy of an afternoon to go into 
it now.

after i finished the weetzie bat books, i picked up my old, yellowed copy 
of the hobbit and dwelved into the world of tolkien for the first time 
since my eleventh year. i had forgotten how consuming that book was to me, 
what a chord in my soul those words struck. i picked up the book casually 
and, intimidated by its size, wondering how i ever got through the volumes 
in such a short period of time in my youth, i began picking at the first 
paragraph, but was immediately sucked into bilbo baggins' hobbit hole, 
singing merrily about cracking plates with the dwarves. time sped by, and 
i was entrenched in the story - much like bastian is in the neverending 
story - and by the time i fell back into consciousness, i had already gone 
50 pages into it, and it was nearing four a.m. of course, some things have 
changed - the language is much more clear to my 21 year old mind than it 
was to my 11ish one, so the images are even more vivid and real. and bilbo 
sometimes wears the face of Dust in my mind, of Dust when i first met him. 
and the trolls speak in cockney english, though i'm really not sure why 
that is. but anyway. tolkien is good. if you have never read tolkien 
(blasphemy) you should. do it now.

i also discovered why it is where the heart is struck such a chord within 
me. i seem to live in a constant state of limbo, now even more than ever. 
i went to school with the poorest of the poor; i, like many of them, am 
now a young, single unwed mother. i understand and can relate with them 
about how hard it is to struggle with this kind of lifestyle, to make ends 
meet, to fight with insurance company and medical bills, and to be 
constantly met by unsympathetic eyes that judge you simply based on your 
station in life. how it feels to believe so much in someone only to be 
thoroughly dissappointed. to be young, confused, and terrified. and yet, 
i've gone to great lengths to educate myself. i've always had a curious 
mind thirsty to learn more, an open mind yearing for culture and 
experience and adventure - the mind of your average college student. of 
course, college students don't usually get pregnant shortly after they 
begin their education - they usually wait years after, finding someone 
while in college, getting married, settling down into a career and a 
lifestyle, and then bringing their children into the world. nice, normal, 
successful. what you are taught is the "right way" of living. and here i 
am, stuck in between these two worlds. novalee nation, the young mother in 
where the heart is came from the trailor trash background, understood the 
struggle and hardship, but her curious mind led her to self-education and 
eventually a life in college. she *was* both these worlds, and you simply 
don't see that very often. that is why her truth was so real to me. that 
was why her truth *was* my truth, and why i got so lost in those pages. 
well, one of the reasons.

before i close my book report, i'd like to share a website i found 
yesterday that i really came to love. a lilac mess is a collection of 
poetry, and an online journal, and a few photographs of an extremely 
talented soul by the name of dana - she is journeying through some of the 
worst demons i imagine anyone could, but her mind is bright enough and she 
has a lot of strength and determination that i know she will conquer 
everything she has set out to. the site itself is lovely, the layout very 
nice, beautiful and magical and yet simple all at the same time. her 
poetry is intricate, and her journal entries are like small minature 
stories within themselves. i just thought i would share, for anyone who 
might be interested.

for now, i am going off to laze around in the afternoon. or perhaps just 
to clean house, yet again. (have you noticed i'm making a profession of 
cleaning my house?)