So, I think last night's post may have been my first drunken blog update.  Fun.  I had taken the day off yesterday, to recover from the weekend, so I slept late, walked the dog, then spent a couple hours at a coffee shop.  After dinner, I decided to drink some wine that was left at my apartment a couple weeks ago and read poetry, which is what I was doing when I got the text inviting me out on a Monday.  If I hadn't already been drinking, and/or if I wasn't still in weekend mode, I would not have gone, but as it was, I did, and it was fun.  
Anyway, on the reading update I meant to give...  I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being last week.  Read Autobiography of Red yesterday, and will re-read it soon.  As I was reading, I didn't love it; much of it really did not read as poetry for me, more like chopped up lines of prose.  But the images and story have stuck with me, and I am looking forward to re-reading it.  What else?  I finished Late Wife and loved it.  Still working on the James Wright letters.  Oh, and I read Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (of Wicked fame) - I'd read his Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and found it lacking, and this wasn't as good as Wicked either, but better than the other.
Thinking a lot about this summer and these three holiday weekends in a row and how different they are.  Pride is a celebration of community, a defiant assertion of identity, and (for many of us) a cathartic, Dionysian, revel where we can drink and dance and kiss and fuck our sorrows and issues away in a safe place.  Comfest is a "party with a purpose" as the slogan goes; it is idealistic and rejuvenating, an escape into an idyllic mindset for a weekend which can inform and inspire and anchor us as we go back out into reality.  And now this coming weekend is the dichotomy of Red White & Boom on Friday (the patriotic, mass-culture, traditional display of fireworks downtown) and the DooDah parade on Saturday (complete anarchy and irreverence).  
Next week, I'll start planning my move.  And my going away party.
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2 comments:
Autobiography of Red is one of my favorites. Awesome book.
Try Carson's The Beauty of the Husband. Eros the Bittersweet, while not poetry, is still a wonderful read.
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