Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 61

CarrollBlog 2.10

Searchers

by Jim Harrison

At dawn Warren is on my bed,

a ragged lump of fur listening

to the birds as if deciding whether or not

to catch one. He has an old man's

mimsy delusion. A rabbit runs across

the yard and he walks after it

thinking he might close the widening distance

just as when I followed a lovely woman

on boulevard Montparnasse but couldn't equal

her rapid pace, the click-click of her shoes

moving into the distance, turning the final

corner, but when I turned the corner

she h...

CarrollBlog 2.7

"She gave only what was easy for her; what came naturally and instinctively. What she had always given of herself to past lovers, but nothing more.That was usually enough for them, at least in the short run, because she was very special in her way. As a result, she never made any genuine effort to go beyond her old safe boundaries, the first layer, below the thin topsoil of her limitations. She probably believed she worked hard to make their relationship succeed. Look at what I'm doing for y...

CarrollBlog 2.6

For some reason, I've been a frequent witness to different groups of rowdy teenage boys lately and I've come to at least one general conclusion about them: in most groups of more than five, there are almost always two recognizable types-- the sound effects guy and the Karate Kid. Inevitably there is one boy who makes an unending array of sound effects to match whatever is going on: If the gang are all hurrying to get on a subway, he's the one who makes the 'vroom-vroom' or tire squeal of...

CarrollBlog 2.5

Ex-Boyfriends

by Kim Addonizio

They hang around, hitting on your friends

or else you never hear from them again.

They call when they're drunk, or finally get sober,

they're passing through town and want dinner,

they take your hand across the table, kiss you

when you come back from the bathroom.

They were your loves, your victims,

your good dogs or bad boys, and they're over

you now. one writes a book in which a woman

who sounds suspiciously like you

is the first to be...

CarrollBlog 2.4

The mind is like a detective-- it wants facts and figures. But the heart, its perennial sidekick, keeps shaking its head and smiling: There was no way in the world they were going to find the facts and crack this case.

CarrollBlog 2.3

The subway doors open and a crowd of people pour in. One of them is a man wearing a long beige winter coat covered from top to bottom with blood. It takes seconds for the realization to hit you—THAT'S BLOOD! Then your eyes jump up to his face. A raggedy street person, he's clearly been in a fight and didn't fare so well. There are cuts all over his face. One of his eyes is already beginning to swell. But it's the bloody-massacre coat that is most shocking. I peer around at those nearby to...

CarrollBlog 2.2

The expression on a person's face when they've run to catch a subway or bus but just miss it and the doors close on them.

The expression on their face when they watch puppies play together on the sidewalk.

The expression on their face when they walk out of a public toilet, visibly relieved and bleary eyed.

The expression on a child's face when it is being scolded by an adult.

The expression on a cop's face when someone is explaining to him why they're not wrong.

The expression on a...

CarrollBlog 2.1

Someone told me they read on a blog that two people had tattooed on their wrists the phrase "Hope gleams in the idiot heart," a line from the Russian poet Mayakovsky that they found in my novel THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS. I have always loved the permanence of tattoos, the conviction by the person who gets one that they will be happy to have this thing on their body ten, twenty, thirty years from now. But besides the stupid tattoos I see all over the place today, I have yet to see or think of...

CarrollBlog 1.31

selections from Esquire Magazine's THE RULES:

Talk half as much as you listen

-------------------

A sandwich tastes exactly one-third better when

it's made by someone else.

-------------------

The only thing worse than words ending in "ly" are

words ending in "ize."

----------------------

Never Google old girlfriends

_____________

Never begin an essay with a quote from the Bible

-----------------------

Never name a child after a continent, a nation, or

a commonwealth.

CarrollBlog 1.30

The Ineffable

by George Bilgere

I'm sitting here reading the paper,

feeling warm and satisfied, basically content

with my life and all I have achieved.

Then I go up for a refill and suddenly realize

how much happier I could be with the barista.

Late thirties, hennaed hair, an ahnk

or something tattooed on her ankle,

a little silver ring in her nostril.

There's some mystery surrounding why she's here,

pouring coffee and toasting bagels at her age.

But there's a lot of torsion when she...