Austinist: Come Celebrate the Literary Achievements of Ann Patchett with The Writers' League of Texas

Pablo

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:28:44 -0600

speaking of great literature; i feel compelled to share a verse you may all know, but you can not stop me, everrr.... It so happens I'm tired of being a man. It so happens I enter clothes shops and movie-houses, withered, impenetrable, like a swan made of felt sailing the water of ashes and origins. The smell of a hairdresser’s has me crying and wailing. I only want release from being stone or wool. I only want not to see gardens and businesses, merchandise, spectacles, lifts. It so happens I’m tired of my feet and toenails, my hair and my shadow. It so happens I’m tired of being a man. Still it would be a pleasure to scare a lawyer with a severed lily or deal death to a nun with a poke in the ear. It would be good to go through the streets with an emerald knife and shout out till I died of cold. I don’t want to go on being just a root in the shadows, vacillating, extended, shivering with dream, down in the damp bowels of earth, absorbing it, thinking it, eating it every day. I don’t want to be so much misfortune, I don’t want to go on as a root or a tomb, a subterranean tunnel, just a cellar of death, frozen, dying in pain. This is why, Monday, the day, is burning like petrol, when it sees me arrive with my prison features, and it screeches going by like a scorched tire and its footsteps tread hot with blood towards night. And it drives me to certain street corners, certain damp houses, towards hospitals where skeletons leap from the window, to certain cobbler’s shops stinking of vinegar, to alleyways awful as abysses. There are sulphur-coloured birds and repulsive intestines, hanging from doorways of houses I hate, there are lost dentures in coffee pots there are mirrors that ought to have cried out from horror and shame, there are umbrellas everywhere, poisons and navels. I pass by calmly, with eyes and shoes, with anger, oblivion, pass by, cross through offices, orthopedic stores, and yards where clothes hang down from wires: underpants, towels, and shirts, that cry slow guilty tears.

Jooley_Ann

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:15:12 -0600

Looks like it made it. (Uh, kudos to Manilow I guess.) Cool, and thanks!

elizabeth

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:12:23 -0600

I love Ann Patchett, but not enough to lay down $100 for her. The Magician's Assistant is one of my favorite books.

truecraig

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:51:39 -0600

Or, just email him: allen(@)escapeest.com He's all about being "in the know", so there's that.

Bre

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:51:12 -0600

All suggestions/tips can be emailed to any of the Austinist contributors (see the contributor page for links). We'll make sure they get to the right person.

truecraig

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:49:44 -0600

Jooley - Here's the IST list as it currently stands: http://www.austinist.com/archives/2005/09/27/the_ist_list_september_27_october_2.php Send a message to Allen (email link and whatnot at bottom of that post). He's the man.

Jooley_Ann

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:44:36 -0600

Now that you bring it up, how does one make a suggestion for the Ist List? Ken Webster over at Hyde Park Theatre is doing Eric Bogosian's Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll again. Will be an amazing performance, rest assured. I plan to catch it this weekend if at all possible.

Jaco

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:36:32 -0600

you know how crazy we are.

truecraig

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:38:32 -0600

Ha-ha! Boozin' it up on a school night! We might be a bit too predictable here at Austinist... and that's okay. We still hold it down. Or something like that.

odam

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:33:44 -0600

i think our favorite Ist-list compiler is sleeping off a wicked hangover on his lunch break after celebrating an equally sexy austinist contributor's bday bash/shots barrage. so, fret not, it will be up by mid-afternoon. good lookin out, jen

Jen

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:12:52 -0600

hey man, where's the ist list? am i missing something? It was almost like a daily planner of fun times and free shows.