Brevity

The brevity of a blooming flower is astounding to me
They live only to smell sweet and soak up the sun
If such a short life is filled with such joy
It forces me to wonder
Is the long life worth living?

Kurt Vonnegut: "smh"

Oh man I did this for a laugh. I need to read my classics. I didn't write out the list, it's taken from Tumblr. The bold/red ones are the one's I've read, the italics/blue are the ones I WANT TO READ RIGHT NOW but I'm either too lazy or I don't have the means to get them.

1) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11) Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare
15) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch - George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29) Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34) Emma - Jane Austen
35) Persuasion - Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40) Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41) Animal Farm - George Orwell

42) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50) Atonement - Ian McEwan
51) Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52) Dune - Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72) Dracula - Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses - James Joyce

76) The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77) Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal - Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession - AS Byatt

81) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94) Watership Down - Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 

100) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Oh, you're still reading?



No poetry here, I'm way too tired.
Though lately I've felt rather inspired-
It's the perfumed springtime air I believe,
but I am actually tired so I'll keep this brief.

In Which I Reveal Works in Progress

I can never actually finish shit though. Whatever.

Punchline:
I want to beat you with my logic
Cold cock you with knowledge
Love's an unusual dichotomy for me
It doesn't go over well at parties.

Untitled:
I could kiss your poisoned lips
I could lay beside you in eternity
But frankly that doesn't interest me
I look towards the dead for tips

Untitled #2:
Strolling through the graveyard in late afternoon
Watching as ragged trees rattle their bones
And sing for our sins on the spring blossom wind
I crack a smile and I'm home.

Trod on the roofs of the dead and gone
Plots staked out in anticipation of fate
Sparrows ride on the aerial tide above my mind
Stop and wonder at the noise they make.

Lay among the silent population
As leaves rustle and discuss the sun
Stained my eyes with ghostly lies and promises
Yet they still say I'm the lucky one.


Yep.

The Start, Possibly, of a Novel?

Normally I don't care if you guys critique my work or not (though I do love compliments, really, keep those coming), but I really want to know if my writing style is interesting when it comes to prose, and whether, basically, you would put up with a whole novel of it. It's something I'm really self-conscious and particular about, because personally, I think it's boring as shit. But ANYWAY I also need to know if this even makes sense. Love you all.


Hazy night swallowed the beams of light thrown from the passing cars with a hungry gnashing of its teeth, leaving red and blue trails across his vision. The cool tinted glass cast a purple glow over the world, a gauzy sheen that only made the night seem more real and cold. The barrier flowed beside him, a comforting companion on his singular journey, a journey of 'self-awareness' and 'relaxation' if you could believe his well-meaning campaign director, which you couldn't, not entirely. It was made of solid concrete studded with metal bars and chopped up by the occasional guardrail, and its presence calmed his thudding heartbeat somewhat.

"What do you think, barrier?" he thought, and pressed his forehead against the nice purple glass that kept him a reasonable distance away from his friend. Separate worlds, it was safer that way. "Do you think he really wants to help me?" The barrier flowed on, offering nothing but its steady gaze through the night. His head bounced on the glass as the town car jumped over an uneven section of midnight pavement, and each crack of his forehead on the glass sent a dull firework off in his mind, an explosion of ashy gray and yellow. Even the fireworks in his mind were dirty.

All of a sudden the barrier was swallowed up by the ground, which was coated in a crystalline dusting of sparkling snow, though the cool green grass poked its spiny fingers through where it was able. James's eyes widened, endless spans of glistening black from his dilated pupils, and he pressed one hand against the glass. Dark hair sprouted on his fingers, which were splayed wide apart on the window. His surprised stare locked on to the stretch of grass where barrier had only recently run alongside their car, and his heart ached for his fallen friend.

Then, as quickly as it had dived underneath the terrain, barrier leapt forth victoriously from the earth and resumed its sprint. A ghostly smile split on James's face, and the window reflected his tombstone teeth with an ethereal glow. As he watched the barrier, so strong and steady, was replaced by a guardrail, which scurried on its spindly legs, only to be overtaken once again by the concrete wall, and the two played a game of cat and mouse alongside the black town car as it sped down the parkway.

A violent buzzing tore his gaze away from the wonders of the nighttime world, and James swiveled on the smooth black leather seat to locate the source. Dave reached into the inside pocket of his expensive charcoal suit to grasp the vibrating phone.

"Hello?" Static burst forth and buzzed busily around the interior of the car, and James shut his eyes briefly against the invasive noise.

"Davey boy!" said a jovial man on the other end, his voice bursting through the static. The silence in the car allowed James to hear their conversation without meaning to.

"Harry, how are you?" replied Dave briskly, his tone clipped.

"Listen, Davey," continued Harry, ignoring Dave entirely, "I was telling Mickey earlier--" Laughter filled the car, though both Dave and James bore stoic expressions. Dave held the phone a couple of inches away from his ear as he waited for the mirth to subside.

"Shut-shut up! Shut up, I said!" shouted Harry to his friends, and after a couple of seconds the car was quiet again. "Anyway, Davey boy, like I was saying, I was telling Mickey earlier that after you've finished with this- this 'vacation'--" Jeers could be heard through the phone's tinny speakers, and James cringed and returned his gaze to the window, though he continued to listen. "When you've finished with that, you need, you have to come back here and BUY US A ROUND!"

 Laughter and catcalls erupted once again and Harry chortled in Dave's ear. Dave could imagine Harry's considerable girth shaking as he went red in the face, the result of too many drinks and faith in his humor. He was suddenly thankful for the quiet car trip, though James was certainly not delightful company.

"Yeah, like you need more alcohol," he returned, and Harry chuckled good-naturedly.

"That may be true, Davey boy, but at least I know how to live! How's the trip going, anyway?"

"We've been driving for the last three hours or so," said Dave with a touch of exasperation, "and we're probably about two hours away. It's peaceful."

"I bet it's peaceful. I bet! You'll be getting all the peace you could ever want, am I right, Dave?" To Dave's great annoyance Harry began another round of laughter.

"Yeah, Harry, yeah. Listen though, I've got to be going now, I've got to go."

"Oh of course. Got business to attend to in that town car of yours, eh?" said Harry, and Dave heard the jest in his voice and the sparkle in his brown eyes. "You do that, then. You work. I'll just stay here, if that's all right with everyone," and in the background Dave heard shouts of consent firing like gunshot. "Just remember Davey boy. You finish up with your work, your important vacation and image-saving, and then you haul ass back here and you BUY US ALL A ROUND!"

Dave sighed and hung up, not bothering to say goodbye, and glanced over at James, who was sitting in his characteristic-as of late- silence, staring moodily out at the upstate New York nighttime plateau. As usual, Dave couldn't fathom what was whirring around in that overactive brain of his, but he hoped it wasn't anything that was going to make his job any more difficult than it already was. Thoughts of work began a parade of worries and stress in his mind, and he rested his head on the side of the car, letting his ruminations swirl.