just a stray thought.

i stopped at a favorite used bookstore, time tested books, this evening after work.  i'm not much into things but the things i am in to such as books and movies i tend to collect like a fanboy jonesing for that long lost chewbacca figurine he had when he was eight years old.

so i try to buy only the books i know i'll be rereading.  how do i know a book that i just purchased will be read again?  i don't know but if i'm interested in the book enough to buy i'll most like pick it up again.  besides i love being surrounded not only by the people that i love but the things that i love too, books and movies.  in other words, esse, i'm doomed.

well shit i bought a collection of writing by paul auster.  i've not read auster's fiction.  i know him as a former poet and as a great translator of french poetry.  i picked up the collection of writings, which include critical essays and autobiographical pieces, because one of the pieces is a selection from auster's memoir hand to mouth about his early years as a poet in 1970s paris and nyc.

oh man to be a poet in 1970s paris and nyc!  oh brotha!  for me that is the gilded age.  don't ask why.  i don't know why but it has something to do with dilapidation, punk rock, times square and exploitation movies and back in the '70s nyc was cheap enough to actually foster young starving artists.

and that made me think of being once-upon-a-time a young starving artist myself where i was making discoveries upone discoveries and that the world might've been going to hell but i didn't notice because i was high on life and continuously finding new loves via books, movies and art.

that was heady as all hell and i can't return to the past.  nor do i pine for the past either.  but auster's little memoir reminded me to stop getting all fucked in the head thinking that the world is shit -- even if it is shit -- because to be alive in it is a greatly good gift.

right?  right.  sometimes you gotta slow down and do as our late cat ernie would do, eat the flowers with full knowledge that to be alive and have the priviledge of creation is, fuck yeah, there is nothing better. 

peace