February 20th, 2009

Etsy

Dear you, who asked me what books to read

Anarchism, since you are interested: Anything by Emma Goldman, preferably Anarchism and other essays. Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed. Ayn Raynd's Anthem. If you can stomach it, read every word Noam Chomsky ever wrote. Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara is not anarchist as much as humanist, but i find it equally necessary. 

Vonnegut: Breakfast of champions, Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, Cat's cradle... wait, wait, scratch all that, just read everything he ever wrote too. 

Dystopia: Mockingbird  by Walter Tevis. Do androids dream of electric sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess (yeah, the same dude who wrote A Clockwork Orange, I think this is better). I already said you should read Anthem, but you should check out Ayn Raynd's other work, like The Virtue of Selfishness. I assume you've read all the absolutely classic dystopia books like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World  and all that?  

Insanely large, but totally worth it: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie made me cry, and i love it with a good portion of my heart. The Brothers Karamazov is my favorite book of all time, everyone I tell to read it must think I am the most pretentious person on the planet, but trust me on this. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

Other: read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, but read it in the summer. Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are dead by Tom Stoppard. Read Kafka outside of The Metamorphosis. Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera or Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Eventually read One Hundred Years of Solitude, but not first. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins is great too but that is more of a full-day read, if you take the time to plow through it in one sitting it will be a wholly satisfying experience. 

Art School, since it's relevant to your life: THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again by Andy Warhol. On Dreams by Sigmund Freud. 

"Pleading Hands" 

Poem for the peanut butter I forgot to close and then left on the counter for three weeks.

I want to be in love with you like a rough sponge on that purple cutting board in the kitchen sink

That is, not at all. 

I want to have to fear you, to be 

scared that i'll never survive you and 

to want that, love that, hope that everything you are and everything i am not will rip me apart.

I need to be broken for real, I need to break you for fake. 

I want to destroy you, tear

into you with the lust of a fruit bat into a 

mango in august. 

I want to fuck you like the paisley scarf 

that you wore twice before you decided you would much rather die with it around your neck 

than some rough and rugged noose, 

that would be too bourgeois.

Instead, you love me like a country song 

playing on the digital radio in an over-priced hybrid car that eases your conscience 

about hating animals so much 

their smell and 

that thick, dusty feeling in your throat

is what I taste when you call.

New face hole, about 2 weeks old, i like it lots. 

I had a lot of issues with Delusional Parasitosis when I was little. 

I've been having a lot of memories resurfacing lately. 

Because of the research I've been doing lately, the paranoia in me says I have Dissociative Identity Disorder.