oscillating with my windedness

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast (coming out next week)
Wendy Sutter - Philip Glass' Songs and Poems for Solo Cello (listen)

The two books on my desk that I just got from the library, despite not having time to read the other books I have out from the library, are Barb Johnson's More of This World or Maybe Another and David foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster. The fiction is up on the fourth floor of the library and the contemporary fiction, due to the quirks of the Library of Congress cataloging scheme, are in the back corner, so checking out books becomes an aerobic workout for me, sometimes the only exercise I get all day. Perhaps modern literature will save my life, just not in the way one usually means when they say such a thing.

I met Barb at the Louisiana Book festival last October and have been dying to read her collection of short stories. As for the big DFW, I never make it through his books but I'm compelled to try. It's like running up stairs, or trying to drain a glass in one draught. I want to do it. I was mostly inspired to seek this out because of this video where the esteemed author drinks from an empty glass.



Via Lincoln Michel at the Faster Times.

I could listen to someone grind away on a cello all day, I think. When I get famous and rich and thereby truly eccentric, I may hire a battery of music students to do just that in my presence; make a flyer that simply says "Can you grind away on a cello?" with little cut-out tabs with my phone number and post it on the music school bulletin board. Maybe I can do the same with violists who will tail me on my walks to the library, oscillating with my windedness, contemplative at the check out desk.

Songs and Poems for Solo Cello...

But in the here and now, I am being kind of a bummer on my 225 blog. Next week I hope I have neither fires nor deaths to report and like DFW's careful writer, I too can be an agent of light and goodness.